Swan Song
by mallowmelting
Summary: —COMPLETED— The backstory of Tam and Linh. Minor spoilers for Neverseen.
1. Reflections

A/N: So, this is my first KOTLC fanfiction! (Yay!) And I really have no idea about where this is going to go, and _Lodestar_ (that's Book #5 if you don't know) will probably de-canonize this whole thing and I'm planning to try and write 3.5 fanfics at once so I probably wont update that frequently, maybe once or twice a month. And this first chapter isn't that good or anything, and it's really short, but I don't have enough ideas for even my usual 4,000-word chapter and I'm probably going to run this fanfic into the ground so yeah. Enjoy it while it lasts!

 **EDIT:** Now that _Lodestar_ has come out, I have a few things to make clear to readers who found this fic after _Lodestar_ came out. I'm aware now that I've made Linh blatantly OOC. I'm aware now that their house is called Choralmere, not Thorndale, and that their mom's name is completely different. These are only a few of the more drastic inaccuracies. Please know that I wrote all this before _Lodestar_ came out, and had no way of knowing anything about Tam and Linh's home life. So I made it up. I hope you can enjoy it as a product of my own imagination, even though it's now invalidated by the canon.

* * *

 **CHAPTER 1**

 **REFLECTIONS**

Linh always knew she was . . . different.

Different from her mother, who was like air — she floated through the Lost Cities, chasing the fashions that changed more quickly than the wind. Different from her father, who was solid as a rock — no expression ever crossed his face, except for disappointment. And different from Tam, the fire that blazed through anything daring to get in his way.

She was different than the other girls, daughters of the nobility, who had older brothers or younger sisters and were never thrown dirty looks on the street or had to lie about their age.

Linh had never understood why being a twin was _bad_. She and Tam were sister and brother, just like all the happy families she saw walking along the Pure-lined sidewalks. The only difference was that she and Tam had shared a womb. And what difference did that make?

She had never understood why her mother had always claimed Tam was a year older than her, or why, as a Silencer, she had blocked Linh's voice when she took a breath to object.

She had never understood why her father always told her to run along and play with the other girls, as if he never wanted her around. He used the same words every time, even after she had complained that the girls teased her and pulled her hair and called her Freak Girl.

Linh remembered the last time she had dared to venture back to the playground. They had laughed at the blue dye she had dipped the ends of her hair in. "You look like you fell into a kelpie pond!" they had said.

She had spent so much time choosing exactly the right color, and she thought it had looked rather pretty. But when she got home in the evening, the first thing she did was take her mother's sewing scissors and cut all the blue off.

Now night was approaching, and she watched the sun sink below the hills that enclosed Thorndale. The setting sun turned the world red and orange, the color of the koi fish swimming in the pond beneath her feet.

This was the garden — the only place where she ever felt truly safe. It was like the world was holding its breath here; the sound of the fish swimming in the pond was the only noise.

Quiet as a shadow and quick as water, the gnome Nari slipped down from the trees and sat down on the grass next to Linh.

Nari had worked in the gardens of Thorndale since before Linh had been born, and Linh suspected she had been alive for much longer. She was Linh's most steadfast and only friend.

"Your face is troubled, child," said Nari, her soothing voice a freshly watered plot of soil. "What is the problem?"

A silver tear trickled down Linh's face. She was often prone to crying — cried too much, according to her father — but it wasn't something she could help. She let the tears cascade in a silent waterfall, but she did not say a word — actions speak more clearly than the sophistication of speech to the gnomes.

Nari nodded, understanding. "The day is dying," she said. "You should go back to the house, and sleep away your tears."

"I am afraid of sleep, Nari," said Linh. "For seven nights I have been plagued with a single dream — a face without features, two jewels set where eyes should be. One is blue and sparkles like the sea. The other is pure black and reflects no light at all. The face spins, and I feel myself pulled into the stare of the eyes of light and darkness. What does it mean?"

Nari gave a knowing smile tinged with sadness. "It means you will manifest your special ability soon."

If Linh had turned into a fish, she would not have been more shocked. "But I'm only nine years old."

"Dreams are reality's offspring," said Nari. "They reflect into our eyes the truths we cannot see."

 _But how can it be true?_ wondered Linh after Nari disappeared back into a tree. She gazed down into the koi pond, where starlight now shone in its stillness. She had not realized it was already so late that the stars had come out.

She spent a sleepless night in the garden, wondering what her dream meant yet afraid to see it again.

Linh did not want to manifest early. It would earn her even more stares and dirty looks, and parents pulling their children away as if she had some contagious disease.

But _why_? Why would parents pull their children away? Why would the girls think she had a disease? Why did it matter if she manifested early?

 _Why, why, why?_ the stars above seemed to mock her.

 _Because,_ the whispered flight of fish in the water below her seemed to answer.

 _Because._ That one word should have made her uneasy, made her question, _Because what?_ But that _because_ gave Linh comfort. It was a reason, and any reason was good enough.

"Because." The word parted her lips, wafted through the starry silence. The whisper of a wind rippling against a surface of living glass.

Like she was a puppet being pulled on two strings, Linh reached out a shaky hand to the koi pond. Her fingers brushed the mirrorlike surface, and in the pond she caught a glimpse of the truth she could not see — eyes in a face made of tinted glass, blue as the sky above and sparkling like the sea below.

At the touch of her hand, the silver water clung to her fingers and spun itself into a ball, hovering over her hand.

Linh gasped and backed away. The water-ball shattered and droplets of moonlight rained down on the grass.

 _Why am I manifesting already?_

 _Because,_ the pond assured. _Because._

* * *

"Tam!" Linh tore open the thick curtains from the windows of their shared room, letting the early morning light stream into the room. She shook him. "Tam! Wake up!"

Tam squinted and raised a hand to his eyes to block out the light. "Wossgoingon?"

"You have to come with me!" There must have been something in Linh's voice that said _urgency_ , because Tam got up without another word and let her drag him outside into the garden, still rubbing his eyes.

"What is it?" he asked when Linh finally stopped.

The koi pond was now painted fire-gold by the sunrise, and the reflection of their faces rippled and blurred in the water. Linh kneeled down on the grass. "Watch this."

She cupped her palms and dipped them into the water. She pulled her hands up and, with a single sculptor's stroke, fashioned a golden ball out of the water, which lay rippling in her hands.

Tam staggered back. "How did you do that?"

"Nari says I manifested."

"That's impossible. It can't be."

"Look in the water, Tam." She held out her hands for her brother to see. "It reflects into our eyes the truths we cannot see."

Tam's eyes widened even more, then his brow furrowed as if in confusion. Almost as if he had seen something in his reflection that Linh had not.

"It's some trick," he said, still shaking his head. "You haven't — it's not possible —" Curious, he poked the ball of water with his finger. It burst and shattered into a million pieces, dotting the grass with sunlight.

"It's true, Tam," said Linh, gathering up the golden drops and pulling them back together in her hands. "I'm a Hydrokinetic."

Tam was silent. Linh waited in anticipation for his question — _How?_ or _You're too young!_ maybe. But instead he said, "Can I try?" He held out his hands.

Linh gently rolled the water-ball out of her fingers. But as soon as the ball touched Tam's skin, it burst again.

Tam looked defeated — a look Linh had never seen on his face in all her life. "It's okay," she said, to comfort him. "Maybe you'll manifest soon."

"But why do you get to first?" he asked, sounding like the petulant child their father often made him out to be. "We're supposed to do everything together!"

"I can't help it, Tam!" Her eyes were glistening and his face was red. A fire had been lit and the water beneath was bubbling and boiling. "It's not my fault I got my special ability before you! You're just jealous!"

"I don't even want a stupid ability like yours!" he burst. "I don't want a special ability at all, if what I saw in that cursed ball of water is the truth!"

"What did you see, Tam?" A sudden dread came over Linh. "Are you a Pyrokinetic?"

"What? Of course not." He shook his head vehemently. "No, I saw . . . I saw Father's face reflected there, instead of mine. But it was odd. It was like he was encased in fog — or a shadow."

"Is that what I think it means?"

Tam nodded grimly. "I'm going to be a Shade. Like Father." He put his head in his hands. "This is terrible."

"What are you talking about? He'll be so happy! And proud; he'll be proud of you."

"Being a Shade won't change his opinion of me," he said dejectedly. "He's already decided I'm a disappointment. Having his ability would just increase my chances to mess up."

"That's not true. Father thinks —" Linh stopped. How did she know what their father thought of her and Tam? Maybe it was the way he looked at only Tam when they were together, or how he brushed Tam's hair from his sleeping face at night when he thought Linh was asleep. The smallest of indications, but Linh needed no reflecting pool to be certain of the truth. "He has always preferred his son to his daughter. It's me who will increase my chances to mess up. He's always wanted you to follow in his footsteps, to be the next Shade in the Song family."

"But I don't want to be like him, Linh!"

"You never were, you're not, and you won't be," she said. "Having the same ability doesn't mean _you're_ the same. You're more than Father will ever be. You're smart, caring, brave —"

"— disappointing."

The wave of longing had borne Tam down years ago, had made him crave his father's approval, even as he shoved Tam aside and turned away. "That's not true. What Father thinks of you isn't true."

Reflections show the truth, but truth is in the eye of the beholder.

And two pairs of eyes, Shade eyes, stared at the truth in reflections of each other.

* * *

The next night, Linh was still afraid to sleep. But the wave of fatigue finally bore her down, and she collapsed in the garden, where Nari sang to her and carried her back to her bed.

She again dreamt of the spinning face, where shadows now poured out from the black eye and water from the blue one. And Linh could only watch in horror as a jeweled city she had never seen was swept off its feet by a dark tide.

Linh woke up drenched in sweat and cold as the sea. The moisture on her hand sparkled silver and, in front of her disbelieving eyes, changed into the jeweled city, drowning in her deluge.

She blinked hard and the image vanished. _What was it?_

Shades could sense potential for darkness in people. She had never heard of anything like it, but maybe Hydrokinetics could see that sort of potential in water. Linh wouldn't know; she'd never met another Hydrokinetic.

She did know one thing though, in her heart of hearts.

 _No one can know._

* * *

A/N: So . . . yeah, that was the first chapter! I hope you liked it, and I'd really appreciate it if you could take a moment to jot down a quick review! I welcome all criticism as long as it is **constructive** , and I hope to have Ch2 up soon-ish. Bye!


	2. Exile

A/N: Yay, Chapter 2! I've skipped quite a bit of time between Ch1 and Ch2 — this chapter is set about three years later. I'll be alternating back and forth between Linh's POV at Foxfire and Tam's POV at Exillium. Enjoy!

* * *

 **CHAPTER 2**

 **EXILE**

"I will go with Linh."

As soon as the words left him, the feeling of the room changed so much it was almost palpable. Councillor Bronte, his mouth pressed thinner than Tam thought was possible. His mother, shocked. His father, disbelieving. And Linh, furious.

"I can go alone!" she shouted. "I'm not afraid!"

"You should be," Tam said back. "You'll die there. I'm coming with you."

"Mr. Song," said Dame Alina, "you have a future in the Lost Cities. Your grades have been first-rate ever since you entered Foxfire. If you stay, you will no doubt take the elite levels. You could become an Emissary, maybe even a Councillor one day." Her voice hardened. "But if you choose Exillium, you will be banished from the Lost Cities. And it will be very hard to come back."

"I know."

"Tam." This time the voice came from his father. "Please. Don't go with her."

"I think that's the first time you ever said 'please' to me."

Tam turned so his shadow crossed his father's. "I know why you want me to stay," he whispered, "and if you think that you are more important to me than Linh, you're crazy." He smirked as his father blanched.

"Mr. Song," tried Councillor Emery, "your sister's crime is not your own."

"It wasn't her fault, either!" Tam turned to his mother now. "What were you thinking, taking her to Atlantis?"

"It showed she was unstable," Councillor Bronte said, "and unfit for society. I am not sure someone the likes of her is fit for even Exillium."

Linh looked shaken by that comment. Her face went all pale, like it always did right before she started to cry. But she swallowed hard and the glassy sheen of tears left her eyes.

"I'm not afraid," she repeated quietly, with much less conviction than the first time.

"Neither am I," said Tam.

"Tam, you don't have to —"

"This isn't just for you," he whispered. "It's for me, too. You know what I mean."

Of course Linh knew. She too had been forced to hide behind a shadow of lies. She stole a glance at their father and like she knew what Tam was thinking, he knew exactly what she was thinking.

"We're going to Exillium. Together," said Tam. There would be no more debate.

It was almost a minute before Emery responded. "Very well."

* * *

"Look what you got us into, Linh!" Tam paced the floor of their bedroom. "This is your fault. If you hadn't told Mother —"

"So it's my fault now, is it?" Linh shouted over her brother. "I didn't force you to come to Exillium with me! No, you had to be all brave and brotherly and honorable —"

"I couldn't let you go there alone!"

"I don't need protection!"

"Yes, you do!" Tam retaliated. "What if something like that happens again? You'll have nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. You need me!"

"I DON'T NEED YOU!" screamed Linh. "Where did you get that idea into your head? Do you think I'm weak? Do you think I'm not capable of surviving on my own?" She stomped into the bathroom, and Tam heard running water and the sound of splashing. Whenever Linh got angry, this was how she would always respond. Dunk her head in cold water to drown her sorrows.

Soon enough, she came back out, drenched but the fire was gone from her cheeks. Tam just stood there, waiting for her to make the first move.

After several minutes of silence, he could stand it no longer. "So, how are you f—"

A stream of water struck his open mouth and he gasped and choked. Linh strode out the door, hair now perfectly dry and no longer leaving dark footprints on the carpet.

"Well then! Be that way!" Tam shouted at her retreating figure.

He kicked the door shut. Then he kicked his bed, kicked his desk, stomped all over the floor. He needed to break something. If only he had some ability more powerful than being a stupid Shade.

Tam spied a small crystal vase containing blue flowers on Linh's desk. That could break! He stomped over and in one motion, swept the vase to the ground. The vase shattered into a hundred light-refracting pieces, and the flowers and water spilled out onto the floor. He ground the petals into the carpet with his foot, then kicked the desk for good measure.

The force of his kick brought a pile of papers fluttering to the floor. Feeling a little guilty, Tam bent down to pick them up. The papers were mostly Foxfire stuff — notes, essays, and the like.

He was shuffling the papers into a neat-ish stack when something separated from the pile and fell to the floor. It wasn't a notecard; it didn't flutter, it _fell_. It had some weight to it.

Tam set the papers back on the ground to look at the object. It seemed like a circle of plain black felt, but when he turned it over Tam found a white eye stitched onto the other side. When he held it up the light, he saw that the patch had a hole bored into what he assumed was the top; a hole made by a pin poking through it dozens — no, hundreds — of times. Taken on and off hundreds of times.

Tam had never seen the symbol before. He had no idea what it meant. Maybe it was a club patch or something — it was in with her Foxfire stuff. But why hadn't he seen Linh wearing it before? And why would she keep something like that from him?

He slipped the eye-patch back in the stack of papers and replaced it on her desk.

* * *

Tam didn't see Linh until the next morning and frankly, he didn't care. Where Linh went while he slept was none of his business.

But he found it increasingly difficult to stay angry at his twin as the morning progressed. If Linh had been glaring daggers at him as well, it would have been easier. But no, she ate breakfast and packed up her things and put on her new Exillium uniform like it was the most ordinary day in the world.

She just didn't speak to Tam.

Only after they had arrived at the tent school — that day in a barren desert where the sirocco wind blew sand and grit across their faces — did Linh finally say a word.

"You broke it."

"I — what?"

"My vase. Nari gave it to me."

"Oh." Tam looked down at his shoes. "Sorry."

Tam and Linh now stood in front of an enormous arch of jagged black metal. In the searing heat of the desert, they shivered in sync.

Linh was shaking and ghost-white. For the first time in — how long had it been? he couldn't remember — Tam reached out and took her hand. She seemed surprised at first, but then squeezed it so hard Tam feared for the life of his own hand.

"Are you ready?"

Linh nodded. "Ready as I'll ever be."

Together, they stepped through the arch . . .

Tam heard her scream, and felt his arm yanked up by Linh's iron grip as she was pulled into the air. Then the trap sprung on him as well, and the two of them found themselves dangling upside down from the arch, hanging like icicles from an awning on a cold winter day.

Tam cursed.

Three cloaked figures emerged from the tents beyond. One was dressed in red, another in blue, and the last in purple.

"Welcome to your Dividing!" Red Cloak said in a raspy voice. "Find your way to freedom, or perish!"

"There's no right answer to the problem," added the nasally Blue Cloak, "and no wrong answer, either. You must untie or sever the cord; choose wisely! This will determine which one of us will be teaching you."

"And what happens if we don't choose?" asked Tam.

"Then you perish!" rasped Red Cloak. "Perish, perish!"

"That doesn't seem too bad to me, Linh, what do you think?"

She caught on quickly. "Yeah, I've got no problem with just hanging here. It's actually pretty comfortable."

"Perish, perish, _perish!_ " Red Cloak persisted.

But they still hung there and refused to move. Tam even folded his arms and attempted to cross his legs in a nonchalant-looking position, which is no easy feat when you're suspended upside down seven feet in the air.

Meanwhile, Red Cloak kept shouting, "Perish!" and Blue Cloak stood there looking annoyed, while Purple Cloak was becoming increasingly fidgety as the minutes ticked by.

Finally, she threw her hands up in the air. "For god's sake, I have a school to teach!" Purple Cloak pulled a blade from the folds of her cloak and cut down the ropes holding up Tam and Linh. They fell to the ground with a _thud_.

Obviously exasperated, Purple Cloak dipped her hands in violet paint and slapped her handprints on either of Tam and Linh's sleeves. She muttered something under her breath about all the trouble kids ending up with her. "Go to class." She pointed brusquely toward the largest tent.

Tam got to his feet and brushed himself off. He was about to give a snarky reply, but saw Linh out of the corner of his eye giving him the death stare, like she knew exactly what she was going to say. He bit his comment back. "Come on, Linh."

He strode away, head held high, unlike Linh, who seemed to shrink into herself with every step she took. As he opened the tent flap to enter, he heard Purple Cloak's voice in his head.

 _You're going to be trouble, boy. And let me give you one warning, Tam Song: Exillium doesn't like trouble._

Tam blinked hard to stop himself from cringing. If there was one thing he hated, it was Telepaths inside his head. He could figure out a lot about a person just by watching them; he could only imagine how much a Telepath could find out.

* * *

A/N: Well, that was another really short chapter. I'm hoping that they'll get longer once I've gotten into the story. Again, reviews are appreciated!


	3. A Boy Who Disappeared

A/N: Here's Chapter 3! Squeeeeee I'm so excited the story is getting started now! Also, OCs. OCs are fun to write. :D

This is Linh's POV set three years before the previous chapter.

* * *

 **CHAPTER 3**

 **A BOY WHO DISAPPEARED**

Thanh Song walked into her daughter's bedroom, quieter than a cat's footfall. As a Silencer, she had the power to render herself and others completely silent. She spoke so rarely that often the only way a person could tell if she was using her ability or not was if they could hear the wind rustling through her hair. She stood poised within the threshold of Tam and Linh's empty room, wearing a floor-length blue dress with a matching cape, scattered with pearls that made her look like a night sky full of stars. Her silky hair, usually swept into some elaborate updo, now lay flat against her back, but this did not detract from her unearthly beauty. She stood there for a moment, listening to the running water in Linh's sink.

"Linh?" she called out. "Are you in there?"

She heard the water shut off and the sound of Linh's footsteps, echoing in the room that was otherwise silent as death, as she stepped out of the bathroom.

Linh always hated having to see her mother. Thanh Song was just another reminder of how different she was, how out of place. The whispers followed her through the streets — _Thanh's weird daughter, such a pity she'll never be as beautiful as her mother_ — and Linh didn't need to be reminded at home as well. She would have preferred to stay alone, practicing sculpting fish and flowers out of water, but she hadn't heard her mother's voice in so long that it shocked her enough to come out.

She stood in the doorway, twisting her hands behind her back in an attempt to inconspicuously draw the water out of her soaked hair.

"Yes, Mother?"

 _Twist, twist, squelch._

She winced as a particularly large drip of water slipped through her fingers and landed on the carpet with a soft _squish_. She hoped her mother was too airheaded to have noticed.

"Your father and I are leaving for Eternalia tomorrow," Thanh Song said stiffly, like her voice was an eastern wind that had not blown in Linh's way for a long time.

"Okay."

"I've asked Nari to take care of you and Tam while we're gone."

"Mhm." Not that this would make much of a difference. After her father's promotion to Emissary, she hardly saw either of her parents all day.

They stood there for a while without speaking, the little girl with unevenly cut hair and hands twisted behind her back, and the goddess-like woman who seemed to almost float.

Finally, Thanh Song said, "What are you hiding behind your back?"

"Nothing." Linh's fingers began to shake.

"Show me."

"I told you, I'm not holding anything!" Her fingers shook harder.

"Don't lie to me, Linh."

Her hands were now shaking so violently that all it would take was one — tiny — slip —

The water-ball burst and Linh closed her eyes and cringed, waiting for the water to start seeping into the carpet beneath her feet.

But when she opened her eyes, the floor was still dry.

And six inches above the ground, a layer of water was suspended in the air, smooth as glass and rippling ever so slightly.

Linh's mother fainted.

It wasn't the graceful sort of faint that all the noblewomen did in the pantomimes, where they would put a hand to their foreheads and swoon onto a sofa. It wasn't the kind of faint in the comedies, either, where they would fall to the ground heavy as marble and stiff as a board. Instead, Thanh Song's legs had given out from underneath her, and she clawed for something to hold onto but, finding nothing but air, fell down to the ground with a _thump_.

And of course, that was the exact moment that Tam decided to walk into the room.

"Whoa. What happened?"

"I think I killed her," Linh whispered.

"Congratulations."

"I'm not joking, Tam!"

"Me neither."

He pulled out a blue leaping crystal from the inside of his tunic — a crystal to the Forbidden Cities. Linh drew in a sharp breath.

"Where did you get that?"

"Alvar nicked it from his dad. Cost me my Plesiosaur pin."

Perhaps to distract herself from the one question that mattered, Linh asked, "Where does it go?"

"Paris. Mother would like it there, don't you think? All the high fashion, fine food, women with nothing better to do than to sit around looking pretty."

"Tam, what are you saying?" To distract herself from the one answer that mattered.

He cupped the blue crystal in the basin of shadow that was his hand. In the half-light of sunset, Tam's face was partly hidden in darkness, harsh shadows tracing his brows and the slope of his nose and cheekbones. A golden light filtered across her brother's eyes, but they needed no outside light to illuminate the fire burning within.

The twins were still the same height. Their shadow-shapes still looked near-identical. Their faces were but imprinted images of the other — high cheekbones, sharp features, eyes duplicate shades of blue. They were the same in nearly every aspect, and this was the first time Linh felt afraid of her brother.

Of course, being a child she said, "Tam, you're scaring me."

Those words seemed to mist away the fire in Tam's eyes; he closed his hand over the leaping crystal and replaced it around his neck. The heat of the moment had left him, but he still looked like a crouching tiger, poised to strike.

"It wouldn't solve anything," said Linh.

"That's not true, Linh," Tam responded. "That's not true and you know it."

The thought occurred to her that if Linh had pulled out a leaping crystal to a Forbidden City on their sleeping father, Tam would have stopped her.

The real question was, would it have been his fear that stopped her, or his anger? The fire in her eyes or in his own?

"It wouldn't solve anything," she repeated.

Tam didn't reply. He just put his hands in his pockets and walked back out.

A boy who disappeared.

* * *

Linh swung her feet from the too-high chair. She stared at the wall, the floor, the cup of water on the table before her. Anywhere but the people looking at her.

Her reflection in the water stretched and distorted. Her eye ballooned to the size of her whole face, lashes disappearing and iris flattening until it looked like a doll's eye in a cup.

Swing from the too-high chair. Wall, floor, cup, repeat. Dolls' eyes follow only one path.

"We can't take any action until we actually see what Miss Song can do," Councillor Bronte said dryly, the implication of what he was saying all too clear.

Wall, floor, cup, repeat.

"Út-Linh, show the Councillors what you did in front of Mother." Father's voice was soft and gentle, but his eyes betrayed the truth — they were as hard as blue diamonds.

Wall, floor, cup, repeat.

Linh would wait this out. She would be as silent as Thanh Song.

"Oh, please," Bronte growled. "We can't sit around forever waiting for the child to make up her mind! Let's see if you really are a Hydrokinetic." With a sweeping stroke of his arm, he knocked the cup of water to the floor. The doll's eye shattered.

And without her even meaning to, the drops of water suspended themselves six inches from the floor.

The Council gave a collective gasp.

She wasn't trying to do anything — wasn't even _aware_ she was doing anything — but the water formed into a ribbon and snaked its way back into the cup.

Emery put a hand to his forehead and scrunched up his face, like he couldn't deal with the barrage of thoughts that must have just entered his mind.

Linh watched a mental conversation express itself in the facial features of one elf. It was riveting, seeing the thoughts and feelings of twelve people show themselves on Emery's face.

After what felt like hours, Emery finally spoke aloud. "Kenric, we can't send her to Foxfire. That's out of the question."

"Why NOT?" Kenric ran his fingers through his fiery hair.

Foxfire! The thought had never crossed Linh's mind. But now it made sense why she should go. After all, her ability had already manifested. She would need lessons.

"I want to —" she began, before she realized she was making no sound. She tried again. "I want to go to Foxfire." Still, no sound.

Shakily, Linh tapped her pinky finger to the cup in front of her.

Nothing. No ring of nail against china. No sound at all.

Next to her, Thanh Song sat as serene as a sky with no wind, eyes focused straight forward. Linh tapped her on the shoulder.

"Give me back my voice!"

Her mother continued to stare straight forward, as if her daughter had not touched her at all.

"She's not going to Foxfire," said Quyen Song, crushing Linh's dreams like a boulder dropped from the sky.

"But —"

"Kenric," Emery interrupted, "you're outvoted ten to two. Eleven adding Master Song."

Kenric sighed and pressed his lips together. Linh noticed Oralie giving him a sad smile as if to say, _It's you and me against the world, and the world has won._

This time, it was Terik who spoke up. "She'll need —"

"No training," said Linh's father. "I don't want nosy Mentors anywhere near Thorndale."

Tam had been quiet this whole time, sitting almost invisible in his father's shadow. But now he stood up and spoke.

"That's ridiculous! Linh has one of the most powerful abilities in the Lost Cities! She can't just go two years without any training!" He turned to his father. "You would endanger my sister's life, as well as the lives of the people around her, for your own silly pride?"

Quyen and Thanh traded looks that Linh had seen often enough to be able to decipher.

 _Shut him up!_

 _I can't in front of the Councillors!_

 _Well do_ something!

 _What do you want me to do?_

Quyen Song gave a tiny huff. His frustration would have been funny — a little cute, even — if he wasn't so . . . well . . . _scary_.

The room was silent for about a minute. Then out of the blue, Bronte said, "You can do whatever you want, Master Song. But I don't want to hear anything about your daughter until she shows up at Foxfire two years from now."

And with that, the decision was made. Linh and her family leaped away — but not before she noticed her father's shadow stretching across Bronte's.

* * *

"What did he say to you?"

Tam had just walked into the bedroom, after being pulled aside by their father and no doubt given a very stern talking-to. But he didn't seem downhearted or even the slightest bit guilty.

Tam shrugged. "Only what I expected." He began to gesture with his hands, mimicking their father talking. "Dishonor! Dishonor on your whole family! Dishonor on you —" he gestured to Linh — "dishonor on your cow —"

"Hey! Shut up!" She threw a pillow at him. He caught it easily and started laughing.

"It was sooooo worth it, though. Did you see the look on Father's face?"

Linh's smile faded. "It doesn't matter anyway. I'm still not going to Foxfire."

Tam sat down beside her. "Hey, it's okay. Who needs to go to that stupid school anyway?"

"You don't get it. It's not just a 'stupid school'."

Her brother didn't respond.

Tam had always been a defiant boy. He hung out with kids his parents would rather he not socialize with, and came back with leaves in his hair and dirt on his face and tracking mud into the house. He traded for forbidden crystals, he talked back to the Council, he poked fun at the man he was supposed to hold the utmost respect for.

Yet underneath it all was something more only Linh could see. Underneath the façade, Tam loved his twin sister. He respected his father, a powerful Shade and Emissary. He had a personal code of honor — just one that allowed for the market and sale of illegal objects.

Underneath it all, Tam was jealous. Why had Linh manifested before him? Why did she get the chance to go to Foxfire before him? It wasn't fair.

And right in front of her eyes, Linh saw the boy she had known all her life — the shoulder she had cried on, the face she had laughed with, the mind she had been able to see so clearly — disappear.

They would never be the same.

She watched as he walked out of the room, mimicking Quyen Song's long stride perfectly.

Then she noticed something lying where he had sat. Intrigued, she leaned over and picked it up.

It was a small doll: a rosy-cheeked cherub with huge chocolate eyes and long black hair. The doll held an empty bird-cage in her hand, and seemed to be searching for her lost bird. Despite herself, Linh smiled. It was just so cute.

When she turned it over, she found a note from Tam stuck to one of the feet.

 _Alvar told me to give this to you. But don't tell anyone about it — it's from San Diego. -Tam_

San Diego! Linh couldn't believe it. How many blue leaping crystals did Alden Vacker have?

She moved to place the doll on her bed, but when she got up something rattled inside. She frowned, and shook it. There was definitely something in there.

After a few tries she found a little plug in the side, expertly concealed by the folds of the doll's dress. The humans may have been hunting themselves to extinction, but Linh had to admit they were clever with their art.

Another note came out, this one rolled up in a glass tube. She unfurled the note: _The bird that escapes from its cage never wants to come back._

There was no signature, just a black-and-white eye stamped at the bottom. The same eye she had seen in her cup of water.

She dropped the note in horror, her clammy fingers leaving a print of moisture on the fragile paper.

Of its own accord, the water soaked into the eye-stamp, making the ink bleed.

And Linh could only watch in fascination and dread as the ink changed into two short, but very important, words.

 _Join us._

* * *

A/N: Why are Linh's chapters so much easier for me to write than Tam's? Eh, idk. This was a really fun chapter. Especially THANH SONG! I love her character so much; she's the only character whose story I've completely mapped out. She's . . . interesting. And I like interesting!

Sorry if I'm sounding repetitive, but please review! I want feedback on how I'm doing!

Ch4 might not be up for a while . . . I actually have no idea what to put in that chapter.

Ok, bye!


	4. It's Not Called Gnomeville

A/N: Mfffff Tam's chapters are so short. I just don't know what to fill them with! Urgh. It's frustrating. But anyway, I have a few things to say.

One- My last chapter confused a lot of you with the timeline. I'm sorry about that. Let me try to explain it better: the odd-numbered chapters (1, 3, 5, etc.) follow Linh before and during their years at Foxfire. The even-numbered chapters (2, 4, 6, etc.) follow Tam during their years at Exillium. So even though it's at the beginning of the fic, Ch2 is set after ALL the odd-numbered chapters (well, except Ch21 but that's insignificant). So, this chapter (Ch4) is set after EVERYTHING — Chapters 1, 2, and 3. I hope I cleared that up for you!

Two- There is a KOTLC writer on FanFiction who goes by the pen name Too Many Booty Calls To Count. If you're active in the KOTLC fandom, you probably know who they are. They have plagiarized a story, rated it K+, and swear like a sailor in their author notes. And when people call them out on it, they are a REALLY bad sport about it. I've already sent FanFiction Support an email to alert them to this, and I know some people who have as well, but it would only help if you could send Support an email about this too (if you haven't already). Just send an email to support — it takes hardly any time at all. If enough people send emails, we could get this writer's account suspended.

Three- On a happier note . . . HAVE YOU GUYS SEEN THE LODESTAR COVER? IT LOOKS AMA-A-AZING! AND TAM (MY FAVORITE CHARACTER) IS ON IT! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH THIS BOOK IS GOING TO BE SO GOOD ! ! ! ! !

Four- I changed the ending of Ch3 a bit because I had a new idea. It's nothing huge, but you should probably reread it.

That's all I have to say. Sorry about the long author note. Here's Ch4!

* * *

 **CHAPTER 4**

 **IT'S NOT CALLED GNOMEVILLE**

The big black bead clinked against the blue one as it slid into place. Tam shook out his hand — it still stung from the bead's electric shock. He felt plain — naked, even — next to the Waywards who flaunted so many beads that their necklaces had to wrap around their necks four or five times. Tam couldn't imagine being stuck at Exillium for that long.

The school day was over, but still nobody spoke. Many were staring openly at his Shade pin, the black hand that he had painted silver. Even in banishment, everyone stayed away from the Shade.

 _They want us to hate each other,_ Tam realized. _The only thing we can judge each other by is our pins._

He watched as each Wayward pulled out a worn crystal and leaped away, alone. With a start, he remembered that he'd thrown his home crystal into the river yesterday. Not that he wanted to go back. If he saw Thorndale again in a hundred thousand years, it would be too soon. But he needed _somewhere_ to leap to . . .

The sinking sun made it easy to stretch his shadow over Linh's a few yards away.

"Where do we go?" he whispered.

Without looking at him, Linh held up a yellow crystal.

Normally Tam would demand where in the name of the Lost Cities did Linh get a crystal to the Neutral Territories, but today was not the day to be asking such questions. And, he thought as Alden's Parisien crystal weighed heavy in his pocket, it wasn't like he had anything against it. Trying not to draw attention, he slowly shuffled toward his sister.

The second he got close enough to Linh, she grabbed his arm and held the crystal to the light.

* * *

Tam didn't know what he had expected when Linh had pulled him away. An elf town, maybe — he knew there were a few of those in the Neutral Territories. Or a hermit's cave in the mountains. That seemed more Linh's style. Well, whatever he had expected, he certainly _hadn't_ expected a village full of gnomes.

The small, green-skinned creatures were everywhere — gardening, tending to young ones, or simply walking around humming. Children chased each other over fallen logs, shouting and shrieking when they fell down. Something delicious-smelling bubbled in a huge cooking pot. And underneath all the sounds and chatter of community, a groaning, raspy song seemed to breathe from the roots of the earth itself.

But when the twins appeared, the whole village fell silent. Even the wind seemed to cease its blowing; the great, ancient trees stopped rustling.

"You," Tam said to Linh, trying to ignore the stares, "have brought us to Gnomeville."

"It's not called Gnomeville," she chastised. "This is the Wildwood Colony."

"A stout gnome in grass-woven overalls shuffled up to Tam and Linh. "Who are you?" he asked in the Enlightened Language.

"Is Sadysa here?" Linh's voice was calm, quiet, and soothing, so different from the hissing cat she had been the day before.

"What do you want with Sadysa?"

"I just want to talk to her."

Before the grumpy gnome could reply, a hard-eyed she-gnome shouldered her way to the front of the crowd that had gathered.

"I am Sadysa," she said. "Say what you must, then begone. We don't want elven brats around here."

 _How could these gnomes be the same species as Nari?_ wondered Tam, remembering the sweet old gnome who had cared for Thorndale's gardens. He stole a look at his twin — her face had gone very pale, but she set her jaw and reached into her pocket.

At first glance, it looked like a shard of glass. But there were too many facets, and it didn't cut Linh's hand when she pulled it out.

It was a broken piece of the crystal vase Nari had given her. The vase that Tam had broken.

Sadysa snatched it from Linh's hand. A haunted look came into her eyes. She looked up again.

"The children will stay."

Shouting broke out among the gnomes.

"SHUT UP!" yelled Sadysa, fixing her steely gaze on the gaggle of gnomes. They fell silent.

Tam officially liked Sadysa very much.

"These children were trusted by my mother," said Sadysa. "We would be honored to give them aid. You need a place to stay?"

Tam and Linh nodded.

"Come with me. We have an empty hut."

* * *

After the most delicious dinner he had ever eaten, Tam flopped onto the bottom bunk, exhausted. The bed, like the rest of the little hut, seemed to have grown straight out of the ground — a bed-shaped tree with a mattress and patchwork quilt. He spread out his arms and legs, taking up as much space as he could, this gnome-made blanket feeling softer than his feather-down bed at Thorndale ever did.

Linh, on the other hand, headed over to a corner and sort of curled up against the wall, a cloud of mist surrounding her head like a halo. She pulled out the shard of crystal and looked into it with a strange look in her eyes.

"Hey, Linh —"

"I know what you're going to say —"

"— I'm not going to ask any questions."

She looked back down at her hands. "Okay," she said quietly.

"Honestly, I'm just happy you found us a place, so even though I have a lot of questions — and not all of them are about what just happened — I'm not going to ask them."

"Well, let me ask _you_ one question: why not?"

"Because I don't want anything you may have done in the past, to get that crystal or anything else, to weigh on my conscience."

She shrugged. "Fair enough." Linh seemed subdued, even more than usual.

"We don't have to go back to Exillium, you know. If you really hate it." Tam thought again of the leaping crystal that he had kept on him all these years. How long had it been? Two, almost three years. It seemed longer somehow.

"No. We have to go back." She fingered the silver tips of her hair. Linh had always liked to dip-dye her hair different colors — shades of blue, usually, but Tam remembered a times when it had been green, purple, gold; she even had a pink phase, although that one didn't last long. But now she had dipped her hair in something much more permanent than dye — and much more meaningful.

"I cannot lose control again," she said. "I need all the help I can get, even if it's from Exillium." She sighed a little. "The school is a distraction as well."

"A distraction from what?" he asked, before he remembered his _no questions_ vow. But Linh didn't seem to mind.

"From when I'm scared." She stared at the trickle of water weeping from the wall, as if she could see something that wasn't there. "Tam," she asked, "if you did something wrong, and it hurt some people, but it's over now and done with, and you know never to do it again, would you ever feel scared something awful is still going to come of it?"

She must have been talking about Atlantis. Tam hadn't been there, but he had heard about the wreckage. "But that's the thing, Linh. It's over. No one died. Our mother saw to that. You could even say you did the fine noble people of Atlantis a favor. You showed them how easily their fragile barrier could be knocked down."

Linh didn't respond, so he reverted back to the old tried-and-true statement: "It's not your fault. It was an accident."

Her response was so quiet, Tam wouldn't have been able to hear it if the weeping water hadn't halted in its flowing. It was the whisper of the faintest wind.

"It wasn't an accident."

Not knowing what to say — for he had already said everything he could — he simply watched his sister play with the miniature waterfall. She stopped its flow, and then let it all go in a rush. She had it weave zigzags and curlicues up and down and all over the wall. Then she turned it into shapes. A beating heart. A pirate ship. A ball of fire. The water detached from the wooden wall, and suspended itself in a thousand droplets above Linh's head.

Tam had a vague sense of déjà vu as he watched this. Many years ago, he had stumbled across Thanh Song, his mother, doing something similar. She was sitting in the garden, unaware her son was watching from behind a tree, and she had spun the air into shapes and movement. It had been beautiful, the wind spinning around the woman whose hair flowed free, dancing in shapes and patterns and the closest thing to a smile he had ever seen on his mother's face. But the most striking thing about it was how deathly silent the whole performance was; when the wind should have been roaring and the chimes tinkling and and the leaves susurrating, everything was completely noiseless. So quiet it was almost like negative sound.

Tam had never asked her how she did it.

He could almost see something now, as Linh spun silver into jewels — like a line, between the past and the present. But it remained just out of reach.

He would find it soon enough. And when he did, everything would be clear — and everything would be shattered.

He fell asleep to the sound of trickling water.

* * *

A/N: Don't worry — all the mysteriousness will be revealed next chapter! Or . . . Ch15. Or Ch20. Depends on the mystery. Anyway, please review! I'll update soon!


	5. Nari's Gift

A/N: Sorry for the long(ish) wait, I've been having that horrible kind of writer's block where I just wanted to do anything but write. I wanted to get this up here quickly, so I didn't do a very thorough edit, and UGH there are some parts that are awkward but here it is anyway.

* * *

 **CHAPTER 5**

 **NARI'S GIFT**

Linh didn't know what that symbol meant. But the ink had run down the page like blood and she knew she had to _get rid of it_. She did what she could — she ripped up the note and burned it. She buried the doll deep inside a trunk. Although it could be so easily broken, she couldn't bring herself to break the doll. It was too cute and, although Linh tried to deny it to herself, she saw her own eyes reflected in the doll's glass ones.

And she waited. She knew whoever sent her this doll wouldn't give up easily. So she waited, and waited some more.

But nothing happened.

No notes found their way into porcelain viscera. No dolls with always-staring eyes and kawaii features journeyed from the Forbidden Cities to land in Linh's room. Her nightmares went away.

After a month, she began to believe that these people had given up. After two months, she hardly thought about the doll in her trunk at all. After three, she had forgotten about the experience entirely.

She stayed inside the house most of the time; as far away as she could be from the garden — as far as she could be from water, and the one person (well, gnome) who would want Linh to practice her ability. She was only nine, but Linh knew that she would have to suppress her ability until she entered Foxfire. Doing anything else could be outright dangerous.

She dyed the ends of her hair blue again and spent her days twisting it into knots. She didn't care anymore if anyone thought her hair was ugly. It gave her a chance to be _herself_ , and if that meant being alone in her opinion, so be it. Plus, her mother would flinch every time she saw Linh's hair in one of those "unnatural" colors, which was of course an added bonus.

She distracted herself with these things, but water still found its way to her. It would surround her head in a cloud of mist, fogging her vision. She could not help it. Although she tried to not spill anything, or go near large bodies of water, humidity still formed on the inside of her windows; as the months passed, Linh began to feel an irresistible pull toward water. It was more necessary for life than oxygen. When the summer storms beat down upon the house with dozens of tiny hands, it was almost unbearable. She longed to run out into the deserted streets and let herself be drenched in the warm rain.

Instead, she asked Tam to stay inside with her. During the worst of the storms, he would tell her jokes, spin stories for her (Tam was a wonderful storyteller), or just sit there quietly, letting Linh wrap her arms around him until the shaking of her body, and the want for water, faded away.

That was the first lesson Linh learned about being a Hydrokinetic. In the presence of vast amounts of her element, she needed a tether — a steady focus, something to hold onto in the chaos.

Linh spent her ninth summer huddled on the floor of her bedroom, holding onto Tam so as to not be blown away by the falling sky, the breaking storm, the rising wind. She was a skiff, tossed about by the waves, and he was her anchor.

* * *

With the falling of leaves came the end of Linh's ninth year, and with the subsiding of rain the storm inside her finally passed. She began taking long walks through the isolating ring of hills at the edge of her parents' property, to pass the time. She still didn't go back to the garden.

There was a huge, wide river that snaked through the hilly forest. It had overflowed its banks in summer, but now that the rain was gone it had become shallow enough that Linh could wade through it without soaking her dress. All the fish had washed up on the riverbanks, or been fried by the lightning storms, and by the time autumn came their corpses had been picked clean by birds and their bones carried away to build nests. Linh could walk through the water with only the grass brushing against her toes. She always waded against the slight current, to provide an opposing force to her own.

That was lesson number two: always use something to keep your power in check.

On November first, the beginning of the month of fading daylight, Linh's inception date came without fanfare. She knew Tam was having a party, but she hadn't wanted one. A day alone with no one to bother her would be the perfect birthday.

Linh had not used her ability for almost a year, and she was feeling the strain. The storms were over, but the pull of quiet water still drew her. The silence of a rippling pond, plated with silver under the moon and gold under the sun. The orange-and-white fish, making their noiseless passage underneath the glassblown surface.

So today, instead of fighting her way against the current, she went back to the garden. She was alone; Nari was not there. Linh finally felt at home, more at home than she had ever felt in the woods. She kneeled by the koi pond, propelled by a sudden urge, and dipped a hand into the undisturbed water.

"Well, I never!"

Startled at the seemingly disembodied voice, Linh pulled her hand out of the pond. The stray droplets of water that she shook from her fingers hung in the air, suspended in time for a moment, before falling to the grass.

Nari dropped down from a tree. She was just like Linh remembered her, with leaves in her hair and wise blue eyes and that enigmatic smile.

"Out of all the places to find you, Linh Song, I never would have suspected you'd come back here."

Linh blushed, painfully aware that she had deliberately been avoiding Nari for almost a year.

"I was looking all over for you," continued Nari, pulling out a small brown package from a pocket in her overalls. "I have a gift to give you." She handed the package to Linh. "Happy inception day."

"You didn't have to give me anything," Linh stammered, but she reached out to take the package all the same. She untied the bow of twine and carefully peeled away the wrappings, completely unsure of what she would find inside.

A small crystal vase rolled into her hand. Linh couldn't help but feel a sense of anticlimax. The vase was pretty, and caught the light in just the right way, but frankly she had expected more from the gnome who was more of a mother to her than Thanh Song. But Nari looked so expectant, so Linh forced a smile.

"Thank you. It's very pretty."

Nari gave a little groan. "Of course you wouldn't know what it's really for." She took the vase out of Linh's hands and dipped it into the pond. When she pulled it out, wet all over and filled with water, the crystal seemed to sparkle like it never had before. "The right light can get you anywhere you need," she said, "as long as it exists in the present. To go to the future or the past, however, the light needs a bit of help. Another medium to travel through, like the water from this pond."

"This vase can let me . . . travel through time?"

"Unfortunately, that's illegal," Nari said, "not like when I was young. Ah, those were the good days . . . but you can _see_ the past or future through this vase." She handed the vase back to Linh, who held it as delicately as if it was made of gossamer. "This was made about a hundred thousand years ago, by my grandmother. She passed it down to my mother, who passed it down to me, and now I give it to you, my daughter."

Tears sparked in Linh's eyes. "I understand now. Thank you so much, Nari. I promise I won't let anything happen to it."

"Yes, yes." Nari was growing impatient again. "Well, what are you waiting for? Give it a look!"

Linh closed one eye and squinted through the crystal. "I don't see anything."

"Use your open eye, Linh." She felt Nari's hands guide the vase slightly to the right.

And Linh was barraged by water.

It was more than the summer storms. It was more than a tidal wave. It was as if the whole ocean was spilling onto her. It crashed down onto a jeweled city, destroying trees and buildings and everything in its path.

Linh had been knocked off her feet by the water, and was drowning.

In the back of her mind, she heard a remnant of the thoughts of her future self. Just a tiny whisper, as she was overcome by the waves: _I did it._

With great effort, she closed her eyes shut and the vision vanished. She was alive. She was dry, other than the cold sweat that had broken out on her skin. She opened her eye again, and Nari was standing in front of her, her face fractured in a stained-glass mosaic through the crystal. _What's the matter? What did you see?_ she said, although her voice sounded muffled like she was underwater.

Then something very big and very black bowled into the gnome.

Linh screamed and dropped the glass. Nari still stood on the grass, looking worried. "What's the matter? What did you see?"

 _You can see the past or future through this vase._

"Nari, you have to get out of here!" she shouted, a moment before a great black bird dive-bombed from the sky. It crashed right into Nari, and the old gnome was knocked to the ground.

Then the bird turned its beady eyes to Linh, and she saw that it had a graceful long neck shaped like an S. _A black swan._

Before it could attack, the weeping willow behind Linh reached out a long branch and struck the swan's head, sending the bird flying to the side. It righted itself in midair but was disoriented, and retreated into the skies.

Linh was sobbing; she had curled up on the ground and her face was buried in her knees. What had just happened?

"Linh."

She raised her tear-streaked face to see Nari struggling to sit up. Her overalls were ripped, her face was scratched, and the grass around her was stained red. Blood was seeping from a gouge in her side.

"Nari!" She ran to the gnome and pushed her back down. "Don't move. I'll — I'll get a doctor. Just —" a hiccuped sob escaped her lips — "just stay here."

"No. Don't leave." Nari took Linh's hand in her own and grasped it tightly. "Where's the vase?"

"I still have it." Sure enough, through everything, Linh had managed to hang onto the vase.

"Don't lose it." Nari was now talking so fast Linh could barely keep up. "I don't want you staying at Thorndale without me. Go to Wildwood —" She pulled a scratched yellow crystal from her pocket and pressed it into Linh's hand — "and show the vase to Sadysa. She will give you shelter. Saydsa — remember that name, Linh. Don't forget it!"

"I won't," replied Linh, confused but crying. "What was that thing?"

"A bird under the service of the Black Swan."

"I thought they were just a myth."

"They are very real, and they know who you are and what you can do. They tried to kill you today, and they will do it again. They are dangerous — not to be trusted. Do _not_ reach out to them, ever. And if you ever meet a gnome named Calla, run the other way. She's the worst of them."

Suddenly, Linh noticed that Nari seemed to be sinking into the ground. Her limbs were dissolving into the soil; her hair was turning into grass.

"Linh, let go of my hand."

She let go. "What's happening?"

"I am going back home, to nature." Now only Nari's face was visible above the soil. "Remember Wildwood. Give the crystal to Sadysa," she said, before fully disappearing.

Linh kneeled over where Nari had once lay, crying softly. As her tears landed in the grass of a gnome's grave, a small green shoot sprouted up, its leaves unfurling to take in the sunlight. Linh stopped crying, and took a closer look at the little sprout, the way it stood straight and firm. Just like Nari had.

She would make sure nothing bad would ever happen to this sprout.

She looked through the crystal vase, and saw a great, knotted oak tree where the sprout now stood, ringed with grass the color of blood.

Tears sprung in her eyes again, and when she set down the vase to wipe them away, the image of the great old tree remained. Linh blinked the tears away, and the tree was gone.

She remembered the vision she had had on the back of her hand, of the jeweled city swept away. She had thought she had seen potential, when she had really seen something very different.

Somehow, Linh could see the future in water.

She had one more year before she could finally get ability training. One more year before her questions could be answered.

Linh would not wait one more year.

It took a few minutes, but with the force of her will, she got dark clouds to move over the garden. With a clap of her hands, rain came pouring down.

She remained in the circle of blood, Nari's sprout as her point of focus. The memories kept her grounded in the storm.

* * *

Once Linh started practicing, the dolls began coming again. The person sending her the dolls seemed to be making a sort of game out of it. They hid them in trees, inside her pillowcase, even at the bottom of the koi pond on one occasion. In the next year, she received six in total. And they always came with notes.

She hid them all away. It became almost a reflex: find doll, read note, hide in trunk, repeat. It was the notes that freaked her out.

The last one, discovered about a week after she turned eleven, said, _Blood is much thicker than water._ And on the back, in smaller lettering: _Go look in the topmost drawer of your mother's filing cabinet._

It was the first time that the doll-bearer had given her a direct instruction since the first doll, where they had said _join us_.

Needless to say, Linh was intrigued.

She found what she was looking for conveniently on the top of a stack of papers, with a black and white eye crudely drawn in the corner. Usually Linh would have been at least a little disconcerted that someone had crept into her house and rifled through Thanh Song's files, but the content of that piece of paper immediately took precedence over any unease she may have felt.

Linh stomped into the parlor, where her mother was gossiping with the other neighborhood women. She held up the paper high in the air as the room became silent.

"Mother, what is _this?_ "

Thanh Song blinked a few times. "That is your brother's Foxfire acceptance letter."

"And where's mine?"

"You didn't take the entrance exam."

"Why would Tam take the entrance exam and not me?"

"Don't be silly." A warning note crept into Linh's mother's voice. "You're not eleven yet."

"Oh, so we're doing this again?" Linh wasn't angry. She was furious. She threw Tam's letter to the ground. "Look, I don't care if you want to tell a white lie about my age to your friends —" the women in the parlor gave a collective scandalized gasp — "but you will not keep me out of Foxfire for another year, even if you have to stuff me in a bag and lock me in my closet!"

She ran out of the room and straight to the Leapmaster. In less than a minute she stood in Eternalia, outside the double doors of a huge domed building. A little nervous now, Linh hesitantly knocked. The doors swung open to reveal all twelve Councillors gathered there, as if they were waiting for something. After reading Emery's facial expression, she realized that they were all waiting for _her_.

"Told you she'd come before sundown," said Kenric. "Terik, I believe you owe me five lusters."

* * *

A/N: I'M SORRY I KNOW THAT WAS A HORRIBLE WAY TO KILL OFF A CHARACTER BUT NARI HAD TO DIE D: oh yeah, and I hid a Let the Sky Fall reference in there. Did you catch it?


	6. Deny Thy Father

A/N: Sorry, I haven't updated in forever! This chapter took a really long time to piece together, for some reason — three drafts and four titles XD I hope you enjoy!

* * *

 **CHAPTER 6**

 **DENY THY FATHER**

When Tam awoke the next morning, Linh was already in her uniform. She was fingering the two beads on her Exillium necklace. In one fluid motion, she drew her hand across the length of the whole cord, and thousands of tiny beads made of water appeared in a long transparent row.

He sat up and chose his first words carefully. "You're pretty good at that," said Tam, "for having flooded Atlantis _by accident_."

"So you're awake." Linh's voice betrayed no surprise. "Do you remember our conversation last night?"

Both of the twins were speaking in guarded sentences replete with riddles. Tam had lived with his sister for nearly twelve years; despite double-cloakings of hidden meaning, he knew what answer Linh wanted. It was the answer he wanted as well.

"What conversation?"

"Nothing," she said forcefully. "We talked about nothing. You should get in your uniform."

Tam squinted out the small window, where the first rays of sunlight were only just peeking over the horizon. "It's barely morning. We have lots of time before we have to go." He frowned. "Why are _you_ awake?"

She turned around, and Tam saw her face for the first time that morning; dark storm-clouds had gathered underneath her eyes. "I couldn't sleep."

"That can't be good for your health."

"I don't care." Linh held up the necklace so every artificial bead sparkled in the early-morning light. "Do you see this? It's the number of beads we'll have on our necklaces by the time we're old enough to leave Exillium."

Tam gulped. "That's . . . a lot." The length of the necklace Linh held put all the others he had seen the day before to shame.

"Six years, Tam. Two thousand, two hundred and sixty days. Each day will just be a more painful repetition of the last. So I don't care. There isn't anything in our future worth living for."

There was so much despondency, so much _resignation_ in Linh's voice that if Tam had been a hugger, he would have given her a big hug. But he had never been a hugger. Instead, he walked over and sat next to his sister.

"You made it wrong," he said. "The necklace. You made all the beads the same shape, the same size. But really they're all different. Look at the two you have already. This one's so much bigger than the other —" he touched one bead with the tip of his finger — "and this other one is a little lumpy, too. They're not perfect spheres. In fact, they're not even close."

Linh half-rolled her eyes. "They're not meant to be realistic, they're meant to illustrate a point. Also, there's two thousand, two hundred and sixty of them. I can't make them all unique."

"It's easier to make them all identical," conceded Tam, "but there's no life in them, no soul, if you make them that way. See, I know this bead —" now he gestured to his own necklace — "is from my very first day at Exillium, and this one is from my second day, a day that hasn't yet happened. But your beads — how can you tell if this one is for day five or day two thousand and five? The answer is you can't, if they're all perfect and the same."

His sister sighed, and the silver tips of her hair seemed to shiver as her shoulders sank. She ran her hand through the beads again; what had once reflected only her face now displayed another image, like a shadow had passed over them, each blurry picture different from the last. Linh carefully chose a water-bead near the middle of the necklace, and twisted it into a teardrop shape.

"This is for the day that I will regret all of my mistakes." She chose another, three beads down, and drew a jagged scar down the middle.

"This is for the day that I will find it is easier to forget them." A bead seven days further, pinched until it shrunk down to the size of an earring.

"This is for the day that everyone will leave us." One day later, a heart shape battered with holes.

"This is for the day you will, too."

Tam couldn't think of a way to respond. At first he was incredulous. Leave her? He would never leave her. As long as Linh needed protection, he would be there for her. He always had, their whole lives.

But then again, he couldn't stay with his sister forever.

The tricky thing about growing up is that you never see it coming. You may watch the tick marks on the wall steadily climb higher, or even feel the stretching and aching of your bones as your body strains to outpace itself, but you will always be surprised when you learn you can now reach the cookie jar without standing on your tiptoes. You will always be startled when you see a childhood toy, one of your favorites, that you had forgotten about without realizing it. You will always be shocked when you finally understand something you've looked in the face your entire life, like when water spills over the lip of a glass cup, only it's not what you are seeing that is different — it's you who have changed.

"I don't want to leave you, Linh," said Tam. "I wouldn't be able to live with myself. I'd break."

"You'd be surprised," said Linh, "what an elf can turn their back on without breaking."

The door of their hut opened and Sadysa peeked her head in. "Would you two care to join us for breakfast?"

And that was the end of their conversation. As they ducked out of the hut and into the open air, Tam wondered why he and Linh couldn't seem to talk about anything pleasant anymore.

As the thick wooden door closed, a shiver ran through the hut. The thousands of water-beads, left abandoned on Linh's bunk, burst and soaked the mattress. Only the two real beads remained: the blue one and the black one. As the rumble of life jarred the little room, the black bead pitched forward, almost like a futile attempt to shield it. Then it slowly rolled away.

* * *

The leap to Exillium was a shaky one, and jarring when Tam and Linh landed. As soon as they had gotten their bearings, Tam looked around. The tents, just as patched and worn as the day before, were balanced precariously on a rocky cliff jutting out above . . . the ocean. Tam gulped.

"Linh, you might want to skip class today."

Linh took one look at the rolling waves, and the sky began to pour. And it wasn't the kind of downpour where the rain came down in thin, pure streams, smooth as filtered water from a tap. This was veritable _sheets_ of water, storm-gray and stinging with gravel and the saline jewels of the boundless sea, bearing down relentlessly on unflinching rocks.

Tam put a hand on his sister's shoulder. "Let's go home." It surprised him how quickly he had come to think of Wildwood as home.

"No." Linh dug her nails deep into Tam's forearm, and the rain gradually slowed to a bleak drizzle. Even after she released her grip, Tam still felt the sharp sting of her nails in his skin.

"Remember what the Coaches said yesterday?" said Linh. "If we leave, we can't come back." She took a shuddering breath. "Let's go face our second chance, Tam Song."

Tam flinched and drew away. "Don't call me that," he said. "I renounced our father's name the day I melted down my registry pendant."

The shadow of a smile slipped past Linh's face. Seemingly almost to herself, she said, "Deny thy father and refuse thy name. Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet."

"Where's that from?"

Linh turned away. "Just an old play that I read, a long time ago." She beckoned to her twin. "Well? Let's go, Tam."

The rain had nearly stopped. Tam nodded. "Let's go."

* * *

The Coaches directed Tam and Linh into separate tents to change. Tam took off his hood and slipped into one of the uniform black swimsuits piled up in a bin smelling of mold — which wasn't the most pleasant sensation, as the suit was already damp from salt spray. Tam imagined mist and drops of ocean rising from the dark bin of swimsuits. He pictured a storm-gray cloud fighting to break out through the roof, and rain pouring down, flooding the tent and rolling and breaking with miniature waves, Waywards screaming and scrambling to escape through the tent's single opening, Linh backed up against the corner, frozen in terror at what she had done —

 _No._ He shook the image from his mind. Linh would be careful; she always was.

Still, he listened for the sound of water and screams.

There was nothing; just silence of the most unbreakable kind, a silence born from the feet of twenty Wayward boys slapping aginst cold hard rock, the flap of wet swimsuits clinging to humid air — their twin — then to shivering skin — their hunger, the ever-present call of a thousand whispering birds, each contained in a single drop of sea. Sound made silent by the birds in black, feet slapping against cold hard rock, each isolated in their own drop of sea. Not speaking, until seconds turned into eternities.

Finally, Tam couldn't stand it any longer — the way the Coaches tried to separate them, turn the Waywards against each other. He tapped on the shoulder of the boy standing in front of him.

The boy jumped three feet in the air (literally, it was a mind-over-matter thing) and whirled around to face Tam. He could feel the boy taking in his silver bangs, his measly two beads, his Shade pin. The last one made him widen his eyes, then narrow them into a suspicious scowl.

"Hello." Suddenly every head turned toward this new Wayward who had broken the sacred rule of silence.

Three eternities passed before the boy replied. "Hullo." His voice was low and rusty, like he hadn't used it in a while. Which, Tam guessed, was probably true.

Conversation starters . . . a hundred phrases popped into Tam's head. After a moment, he chose the most direct and fail-safe one.

"D'you know what skill we're learning today?"

The boy cocked his head to one side like he was trying to figure something out. Or like a hungry Rottweiler. Take your pick.

He was older, but only about an inch taller than Tam, who had grown like a plague the past year. He sported a mop of brown hair that had probably been neatly gelled and styled in his Foxfire days, but now hung limply in front of his eyes. His necklace was fairly long — not quite two thousand, two hundred and sixty, but maybe a few hundred. It wrapped around his neck twice. At the base of his throat was a red disc with an open book and a heart drawn across its pages; the boy was an Empath.

Finally, he spoke. But he didn't answer the question. "What'd they banish _you_ for?"

"Take a guess."

"Let's see, you brainwashed someone with your creepy shadowvaper powers."

"Nope." Tam mentally rolled his eyes. The comments had come at Foxfire, too. He tried to hide how much they hurt.

"You brought an endless, starless night to the Lost Cities."

"We can't even do that . . . ?"

"Blackmail."

"Wrong."

"Smuggling."

"Wrong again." _Well, I wasn't_ banished _for that, per se._

"Arson?"

"Not even close."

The boy gave an exasperated huff. "I'm usually good at this sort of thing."

A bell rang, one of those handbells that sounds kind of like a cowbell but obviously isn't, and the Waywards rushed through the tent flap. The Empath boy made to leave as well.

"Wait," said Tam. He stopped.

"What's your name?"

Six eternities to answer this time. "That question could get you ejected."

He left, leaving Tam alone in the tent.

"My name is Tam," the boy with the silver bangs said into the empty air. No surname at the end of it, nothing left to bind him to his parents or Thorndale or the Lost Cities. It made him feel powerful somehow, taking charge of his own name.

"My name is Tam."

* * *

Ten minutes later, all the Waywards stood on the beach. They were alone; this gray, dismal day was no weather for a pleasant swim.

Tam caught sight of Linh immediately, and he walked across the beach to stand with her. He noticed that the movement of the waves nearest to his sister seemed to be strained, as if their rising and falling was something unnatural. He looked around; no one seemed to have noticed him and Linh, let alone the subtle shift of the sea.

The three Coaches assumed their places at the front of the crowd. "Sometimes there are forces that we cannot control," rasped Blue Cloak, "but we can control how we handle them. We cannot change the direction of these waves, but we can master them all the same. Today's lesson will be focused on holding your breath underwater."

The waves gave a tiny hiccup, the smallest of pauses in their journey towards breaking on the beach, as Linh gulped. Her feet dragged through the sand as Tam literally had to pull her into the surf.

"Don't worry, Linh, I'm here," he murmured as she shied away from a coming wave. He noticed the Empath boy, a little ways away, staring at the twins curiously. Tam could imagine what he was thinking — a Hydrokinetic afraid of water?

"Linh, you have to do it," he muttered quietly. "People are watching."

Linh followed the line of his gaze to the Empath boy, gasped in surprise, and her feet slipped out from underneath her. She landed on equal parts sand and gravel with a thump, her head still above the water.

"See?" said Tam. "You're not going to drown. You don't even have to swim. All you have to do is dunk your head. Let's do it together." He took a deep breath and plunged his face into the salt-stinging water.

When he came up two minutes later, red in the face and gasping for breath, Linh was still sitting in the same position, head perfectly dry.

He groaned. "You were supposed to do it with me!"

Linh just shook her head. "I can't," she whispered. "I can't."

Tam remembered one summer, years ago, when he had gone fishing for the first time with Linh. He remembered a glistening trout writhing and twisting on his twin's line, her mouth open in a laugh, bare feet swinging above the lake. Her hair had been gold that day, sunshine gold.

He had been repulsed. He had thought, and still did, that it was cruel, no matter how many times Linh released the fish back into the water, or how many times she said they would be fine. But he had sat on the dock with his line in the lake until nightfall, secretly hoping that no fish found his bait tasty.

When the stars came out in the sky, Tam had still caught no fish. "I can't," he had said. "I can't."

Linh had simply laughed and said, "Of course you can! Just wait a little longer."

 _I don't want to._ "I can't."

So years later, all Tam said was, "Okay. You can't."

They trudged back through the sand and found a rock to sit on for the rest of the day.

* * *

"Linh?"

Tam emerged from the boys' tent, back in his Exillium hood. He scanned the rocky cliff — no Hydrokinetic pins to be found. He picked his way among loose stones to the edge of the cliff; maybe Linh was down on the beach.

At first it looked like a shadow, then an oddly-shaped rock, but as Tam squinted, the shape on the beach solidified into two cloaked figures . . . talking? The one closer to Tam had their arms wrapped around their torso and rhythmically shaking their head almost like a tic, while the other seemed to be pressing something, talking urgently. He couldn't hear their voices; they were drowned out by the wind and the sound of the sea.

After a few minutes of talking, the Waywards began walking up the stone steps of the cliff, hand in hand. And they were turned so Tam could see their pins.

An Empath. And a Hydrokinetic.

* * *

A/N: Why do I love alliterating with the letter S so much?


	7. Gremlins and Confetti

A/N: Sorry for the super short chapter. I'm trying to update more, but that might mean slightly shorter chapters . . . which might actually be a good thing, seeing as these chapters toward the beginning seem to be mostly filler. Enjoy Ch7!

* * *

 **CHAPTER 7**

 **GREMLINS AND CONFETTI**

"Ugh." Tam shuddered as he held up a furry glove to his face. "Whoever had this costume last year did _not_ wash it after they wore it."

Linh eyed her own fleecy ensemble with similar distaste. The Level One mascot was a gremlin, which Linh didn't mind other than the fact that _this_ was the teachers' interpretation of one. A furry black-and-gray jumpsuit with huge paws that looked like they could sustain a small ecosystem, an attachable black snout, and cringe-worthy gray ears attached to a headband. She tried to fix it to her head, but it slipped down in front of her face to rest ever so comfortably on her carotid artery. "I think I have a problem."

Tam paused in his own grumbling to address Linh's issue. He laughed. "I don't think that's where your ears are supposed to go, Linh."

"Oh, stop helping." She pulled off the headband and proceeded to tie off the end with an elastic. "These things are _huge_. How are we supposed to dance in them, exactly?"

He jumped up onto a chair and levitated three inches above the seat. "It is simply a matter of mind over matter," he said, in a perfect impression of Sir Donwell, the Level One PE teacher. "That is the one and _only_ way to master these singularly difficult dance moves in your ridiculous costumes that perfectly represent four-and-a-half-foot gremlins with unfortunately large appendages who drank a gallon of fur growth solution. But it wasn't their fault — they thought it was fruit punch. Now —"

Three loud, rapid knocks sounded on the door, and Tam fell onto the chair with a _thump_.

"Are you two ready? We're late!" growled Quyen Song from behind the closed door.

"Two minutes!" Linh called out. The words had become rote by now. They were always late.

She pulled on her paws, which were too big to begin with and stretched from years and years of use. Her hands felt like they were drowning. The paws wouldn't stay on, and she couldn't hold a thing.

"Tam, can you give me a hand here?"

He pulled off his left paw and held it out like a knight before his queen. "Here you go. I must warn you though, it stinks like an imp."

Linh batted the paw away with her clumsy one. "Just give me a couple rubber bands."

"Where are they?"

"Over there." She gestured in the general direction of her dresser and busied herself with her snout. Why did it have to be so _long?_ She could hardly see a thing.

"What, in here?" Tam asked. She heard the sound of him rummaging in a trunk. "Hey, what's this?"

She turned around to see him pull out a porcelain doll.

It had been two months since the last doll had come. At the sight of painted eyes and blushing cheeks and horsehair ringlets, everything she had worked to forget rushed back to her in an instant.

"Put that back!"

"Why?" He still held the doll in his one un-furry hand.

"Put. It. Back."

Tam put his hands up in mock submission. "Okay." He laid the doll back in the trunk and closed the lid. "You know, it's not embarrassing to like dolls."

"Just give me the rubber bands."

He located a pack of them and tossed it to Linh. She barely managed to catch it in her mittened hands.

* * *

"You really don't think it's weird that our school is named after a glowing fungus?" Tam asked after they had leaped onto the grounds.

The glass pyramid of Foxfire had been decorated with an F, so huge that its orange glow chased away the darkness of the quickly-falling night. Growing under this artificial sun, hundreds of luminous green mushrooms dotted the campus. Linh had seen beauty before, in the bubbling of the river and the silence of the forest, in the summer storms and a sprout growing where death had once looked her in the face. But never before had she seen a display such as this, and it was so astounding that she would never, even years later, be able to begin to explain the radiance of Orientation Night. Even the pale blue glowworms writhing on their sustenance as well as their habitat, looked like they were dancing. She almost forgot about the ache in her temples from the weight of the ears and the rubber bands cutting into her wrists.

"I think it's beautiful," Linh answered. "Sometimes we have to live in darkness to create any light." Because of course, foxfire and the glowworms and even the mold that decorated the great glass pyramid all grew only in the blackest of caves, where the shadows did not belong to singular entities but merged together in one darkness, stretching out forever.

As the four of them walked through the crowd, Linh's mother's hand on her shoulder, the crowd of families and prodigies parted to let them pass. Even the sharp winter wind hushed in their presence. The heavy thud of Linh's shoes sounded louder than they had ever before.

She stole a glance up at her parents, and understood why the elves had fallen silent. Her mother and father looked like a fairytale king and queen, with their matching capes of silver. Thanh Song in particular walked — no, _glided_ — with more poise than a Councillor, head held high and leaving a trail of silence in her wake.

That's why Linh thought that the group of dark-haired girls in gremlin suits at the edge of the crowd were entranced by her mother. Linh hadn't spoken to them in two years, and she was surprised at how different they looked. Maybe it was their eyes, for the first time filled not with spite but with awe. Their eyes followed Linh — _Linh,_ with her awkward gremlin paws and blue hair — and they stared.

Even though she hadn't realized it until then, Linh had grown up quite a bit, too.

She lifted her chin until the silver in her eyes reflected the glass pyramid and turned gold.

* * *

Dame Alina's speech, standing on stage, the lights in her eyes, only tripping once, the confetti shower, the rush of prodigies out of the auditorium, it all passed in a blur, rather like the last two years of her life. By the time she made it back into the main courtyard, Linh's neck hurt from swiveling around to look at everything, her ears lay askew on her head, and she was walking around in her sneakers, the furry shoe covers abandoned as hundreds of elves thundered into the cool night air.

A shout from nearby caught her attention. She turned her head around — wincing at the ache — and spotted a group of boys in halcyon outfits circling around another boy. He had a tousled mop of blond hair, and had removed his mask to reveal intelligent, ice-blue eyes. And he was much, much smaller than the other boys, who looked like birds of prey swooping over a kill.

"Look at him, playing at being a bird like us!" said one of the Level Twos. "You belong in the nest, hatchling!" He pushed the blond boy, hard, and he stumbled and fell. "You can't even fly yet!"

The other boys laughed and jeered.

"He's crying!" said another. "Go back to your mother, nestling!" Indeed, the little blond boy had tears in his eyes as he scrambled to his feet. But at the mention of his mother, he stood up straight and looked determined.

"I'm a Level Two," he said. "I'm just as smart as all of you, if not more. Don't tell me I don't deserve to be here."

This statement caused the boys to hoot with laughter. "You, a Level Two? Don't make me laugh," one said. "Did you want to dress up as your big brother, nestling? Is that it, _freak?"_

Linh had been steadily getting angrier, the rage simmering inside of her; every word said had upped the temperature until her blood was boiling. She remembered the glittering black eyes, being pushed into the pond, cutting off her hair. Being called a _freak_.

She made her way through the thinning crowd and, before he even noticed she was there, punched the boy who had last spoke, plumb on the nose.

She wasn't strong enough to actually create any lasting damage, but the boy stumbled backwards in shock.

"Leave him alone," said Linh, with more force than she knew she had in her.

"And who's going to make me, squirt?"

With a snap of her fingers, Linh pulled the water from the nearest fountain like a string. It hovered a foot above her raised hand.

 _"Leave him alone."_

Eyes wide, the halcyons turned their backs and scattered. She returned the water to the fountain and saw the blond boy staring at her. He wasn't _that_ young, she realized. The two of them looked to be about the same age.

The boy didn't say a word. He didn't even nod his head thank you. He just turned his back and ran away, tripping over his halcyon claws, just like the rest of them.

Linh sighed and turned away as well. She wasn't sure what felt worse: being afraid or being feared.

* * *

A/N: Well, that's the chapter. It was fun to write, but sometimes I feel like this story is going soooooo slowly . . . please review! I'd really appreciate your feedback!


	8. Questions and Maybe Answers

A/N: Sorry for the crappy length and quality of this chapter, I just really wanted to get it up here quickly. I forced myself to write at least 1,000 words for this chapter, which was way harder than it sounds, and wow! it turned out to be 1,001! I'm such an overachiever! *inserts sarcasm*

For some reason I really did not want to write this chapter, and I procrastinated so much that my procrastination became productive, so . . . I _finally_ have a detailed outline for this fanfic, which is good I guess. And I've started writing practically every chapter except for Ch8, because procrastination! So there wouldn't be so much filler in Tam's chapters, I pretty much compressed Linh's chapters and smushed several of them together, so some of her chapters are going to be simply _crammed_ with plot. Um, what else was I going to say . . . right, I think in Ch4 I said there would be a chapter in the twenties, well don't pay any attention to that because in my new outline this is only an 18-chapter fic. Which is still way longer than anything I've ever written. This'll be the last chapter of mindless filler (thank the stars) because I actually know where I'm going with this story now, and I'm going to stop talking because I'm sure you're all so interested in my plot-writing struggles. *inserts even more sarcasm*

* * *

 **CHAPTER 8**

 **QUESTIONS AND MAYBE ANSWERS**

Who was this boy?

Why was Linh with him?

And what had they been talking about?

Tam couldn't get the image out of his head as he stood, rooted to the spot on the craggy cliff, watching the two hooded figures walking together hand in hand like they had known each other their entire lives.

The image was of his sister's eyes for that one moment she had lifted her face to meet the igneous stare of the Empath. Her eyes had burned gold, with a fierce determination that Tam had never seen before in his twin. Linh had always been like water — even her talent — quiet and placid, and going along her path alone. But in that moment, he had seen something of himself in Linh's eyes. She was walking against the current.

Then the Empath had shrugged slightly and said something, and held out his hand, and Linh had taken it like it was the most natural thing in the world.

What had happened?

That was the question Tam didn't say out loud. That was the question he had been asking himself, not just that day, not since they had been banished, but a question that had slowly been creeping upon him, encroaching on his mind and growing like a virus.

The fish, and the lake, and bare feet swinging, and how she couldn't see that he hated it.

The silver glistening in her eyes like tears as she said, _Tam, you're scaring me._

Him backed up against the water, choking on tap water, a black patch just out of his line of sight.

How they couldn't talk about anything pleasant anymore.

A rift had been driven between Tam and Linh, created by the steady _chip-chip-chip_ of a microscopic rock hammer, over the course of years and years.

What had happened?

The Empath took out a crystal and leapt away on a beam of emerald light, a stark contrast to the light of the red-painted evening.

As soon as he was gone, Linh seemed lost and unsure again. She wrapped her arms around herself and looked around. She saw Tam on the cliff and beckoned him over.

What could he do? She had their only crystal, after all. He started down the rocky hill, the question nagging at the boy who had promised to ask no questions.

What had happened?

* * *

Back in Wildwood, Linh seemed happier than she had been in a while. Sadysa let her help make the stew for dinner, and showed her how to stir it and when and where to add ingredients. It was obvious that Sadysa was fond of Tam's sister, and Linh liked Sadysa, too. Possibly because she reminded her of Nari. More than possibly, probably so.

Tam had known the old gnome who gardened Thorndale's grounds, but had never been as close to her as Linh had. In fact, he had always felt like there was something — _off_ about her. Something missing, or something there that shouldn't have been. Like she was hiding, or trying too hard.

It was Linh whose hair Sadysa braided every night, Linh who walked barefoot through the throng of gnomes, passing out steaming bowls of stew; it was Linh to whom the gnomes were indebted, and Tam had no right to be there. He was just tagging along.

"Hey, Linh?"

"Yeah?"

"You know how I said I wouldn't ask you any questions?"

"Mhm."

"I kind of need to ask you one now."

"Okay, but I get to choose whether I answer or not."

Tam took a deep breath. "I saw you talking to a boy today," he said quickly.

"What, not you?"

"He was an Empath. A little older than us, brown hair, about my height."

"Oh, you mean Tristan?" Tam was shocked at how utterly casual Linh was acting. She had been talking to someone! At Exillium! And someone had seen! Wasn't she at least a _little_ worried?

"Is that his name? He wouldn't tell me," he replied, feigning nonchalance as well. "How do you know him?"

"Just an old friend from Foxfire," she responded, but Tam had been listening carefully. There had been a slight hitch in Linh's voice between the words "from" and "Foxfire".

"Just a friend?"

 _Now_ Linh looked surprised. "Tam, I don't _like_ him! I mean, he's nice, but yeah, he's just my friend."

"Oh — okay," said Tam, trying to hide how relieved he felt. "I just didn't want — I mean, I thought —"

"No, no, it's alright," said Linh. "I get why you were worried. It's like how Father can't help being a jerk. But you don't have to protect me all the time, Tam. I'm fine on my own."

"You didn't really mean that, right?" Tam asked after a moment.

"What?"

"About me being like Father."

"I didn't say that," she said. "You have to stop taking things so literally."

That hitch in her voice again. A ripple in a lake. The pop and crackle as a twig burns to ash.

Linh had never lied to him before they were banished. There had been some things she and Tam had preferred not to tell each other, and they were okay with that, but neither had told the other an outright lie. At least, not as far as he knew. What had happened?

It was only one question, but had an infinite number of facets. It was a circle, Tam thought, one of Linh's water-beads that refracted light every which way. And the answers could split into rainbows. Endless questions and maybe answers. _What had happened?_

Maybe nothing. Maybe Linh had been lying to him their whole lives.

Maybe she was just better at keeping secrets than Tam thought.

Maybe the hitch in her voice said she realized she couldn't keep them much longer.

* * *

A/N: Thank the stars that that's over. Well, Ch9 is fun. And I'm actually almost done writing it :P Hopefully I'll have it posted soon!


	9. Till Death Do Us Part

A/N: Just so you know, I kind of squished several chapters into one, so that's why Ch9 is so long. I'll admit, this was probably the second-most-excited-to-write chapter in this whole fanfic.

Warning: this chapter has some pretty large spoilers for _Neverseen_. I've also got some theories about _Lodestar_ in this chapter, so here is where this fanfic may be entering AU territory.

Warning #2: This chapter contains my one allotted Elwin Visit. :D

* * *

 **CHAPTER 9**

 **TILL DEATH DO US PART**

Even though they were in different levels, Linh kept an eye on the blond-haired boy for the first few weeks of school.

When they passed each other in the halls, she always made sure to smile at him. She noticed he never sat in the cafeteria during lunch hour, so one day she took her tray outside to find him.

She found him alone in the courtyard, not eating. He was hunched over a notebook, his head down and messy hair spilling into his eyes.

Quietly, so as not to startle him, Linh crept over to his bench to see what he was doing.

He was drawing a bird. At first glance Linh's eyes tricked her, and she thought it was a photograph. But even though it was so perfect it could be one, the drawing was obviously so much _more._ It had been rendered in pencil, but she could see hints of color where there was none. She saw movement, even sound. The bird skimmed the tree cover, wild and free, in a forest that wasn't real.

"Oh my stars," she whispered, almost without realizing it. "That's beautiful."

The boy didn't snatch the notebook away, like Linh worried he might. He looked startled, but not scared.

"It's a mockingbird" was all he said.

Linh frowned. "That's not a real bird. It doesn't exist."

"Of course it exists," he said, like she was stupid. "It just lives in the Forbidden Cities, that's all."

"Well, I've never heard of it."

"Of course you haven't. Prattles' doesn't make them."

Linh was still trying to figure out if that was a joke when the bell rang. She said a quick goodbye, grabbed her things, and left for class. Her last sight was of the Level Two boy staring at his own drawing, tiny twin versions of his mockingbird dancing in his eyes.

* * *

Linh was panting and out of breath by the time she reached her Universe session at the top of the stairs. Three flights of stairs, to be precise. It was a wonder she had gotten there less than a minute late.

Sir Astin, her Universe Mentor, had been cleaning up some spilled stardust when Linh entered the room. At the sound of the door's squeaky hinges — it was old and badly needed to be replaced, but no one wanted to have to lug a new door up three flights of stairs — he stood up and turned, a smile already on his lips.

"Ah, Linh, there you are! Come in. I have an excellent lesson planned for you today."

Linh frowned. "What happened?" She gestured to the spill, which kept floating away from Sir Astin's dustpan and glowed with a curious purple light.

"Oh, nothing." Sir Astin waved his hand, that smile still tugging his face upward. "Just a little mishap my last student had while bottling one of the Messier stars."

"I didn't know stars could be messy, Sir Astin."

Sir Astin laughed. "I didn't mean it like that, Linh. 'Messier 31' is another name for the Andromeda Galaxy, the largest galaxy in our cluster. It's home to over _one trillion_ stars."

That was the nice thing about Sir Astin — he always managed to teach her without Linh realizing she was being taught something. But the bottomless trove of useless facts in his head failed to impress her that day.

"Your last student was Tam."

"Well, yes. Just a little mishap, I said. Nothing terrible."

Linh tried to remember where she had seen him last. They always passed each other going to lunch — him from his Universe session and her from Alchemy. But she couldn't recall seeing him since this morning . . .

"Had to leave our session early, though," continued Sir Astin. "I left him with Elwin in the Healing Center."

"ELWIN!?" yelped Linh. "Oh my god — what did he _do?"_

"I told you, it was noth—"

"I gotta go." Something was tugging at Linh like she was a puppet on invisible strings, pulling her towards Tam. There had been an accident. He was hurt. He was in the _Healing Center._

She pushed open the door and bolted down the three flights of stairs. Sir Astin stayed behind, that inscrutable smile playing on his lips.

* * *

A young elf with wild dark hair and eyes like a storm rushed from a bed in the corner when the door to the Healing Center opened. He looked surprised to see Linh there, but smiled anyway. It wasn't Sir Astin's smile, or Dame Alina's, all teeth and no stars. It was a smile that made Linh feel warm and fuzzy inside.

"Are you here to see your brother?"

Linh nodded. "How did you know?"

"Tam has been asking for you since he woke up. I wanted to go get you, but I'm the only elf in here right now and he really shouldn't be alone. I'm Elwin, by the way."

"He was _unconscious!?"_

"Hey, hey, don't worry about it. It's a beautiful, natural thing. It just hit him a bit hard. That happens sometimes, especially to those with rarer talents."

Linh stared dumbly at Elwin. Unconscious? Asking for her? Hit him a bit hard? Talents?

"Sir Astin didn't tell you?" said Elwin.

She shook her head.

"Linh?" A voice came from the only occupied bed. "Is that you?" Tam tried to haul himself up on his elbows, and with a "No no no no no!" Elwin rushed to his side, with Linh on his heels.

"No sitting up until you feel a hundred percent," said Elwin, gently pushing Tam back down. "No classes, no light leaping for the rest of the day. A bottle of Talent Tonic every evening for a week. And —"

"What is he?" Linh interrupted. Partly because she was curious, partly because she remembered that morning in the garden two years ago and wanted to know if it was true.

"Shade," said Elwin and Tam at the same time. Elwin sounded proud; Tam sounded like he would rather have turned into a verminion.

"Just like your dad," said Elwin, still in that chipper tone of his.

An awkward silence.

"How are you feeling?" asked Linh.

"I'm feeling absolutely fine," Tam said. "A hundred percent. A hundred and fifty."

"No, you're not." Elwin snapped his fingers and an orb appeared over Tam's head, colored a muddy brown. He turned to Linh. "He's not walking out of here any time soon. You should get back to class."

"If I'm staying, she's staying," Tam said obstinately.

Linh saw the world as the sea; pushing and pulling with a lull in the tide once every so often. Action and reaction, deeds done and returned and broken and healed. So she didn't mind missing her Universe session, and even her Hydrokinetic lessons with Lady Moana in the Silver Tower, to sit with Tam when he had spent a whole summer next to her. She would be there as he learned to see the world in darkness and illumination.

Elwin sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I'll write you a pass to skip your afternoon classes," he said to Linh. "And I'll get a chair."

* * *

Winter turned into spring. With spring came clouds and with clouds came rain, but the rain didn't bother Linh so much now. She just stayed inside as much as she could, and when the tugging feeling came she would bury it down deep within the recesses of her consciousness.

With the clouds had come the rain and after the rain came the pink blossoms, filling the air with their fragrance. The flowers rippling the still surfaces of Foxfire's ponds made her feel like she was surrounded by her name: Liên, water lily.

She never made any friends and never tried to, because she had Tam and he had her and they were all the other needed.

And what happened to the boy who drew, you may be asking? Well, Linh ate lunch with him for a little while, but she had the feeling he didn't even notice she was there. He talked to himself, muttering so quietly Linh couldn't make out the words. He occasionally ate. And he drew so much, yet somehow never seemed to fill up his notebook.

Then one day, from a distance, Linh watched as another boy, a Level Two, crept silently next to the blond-haired boy and sat down beside him. They were too far away for Linh to hear, but she could imagine.

 _Wow. That's amazing._

 _It's a mockingbird._

 _That doesn't exist._

 _Of course it does. It just only lives in the Forbidden Cities, that's all. No one has ever caught one, because they're tricky._

 _Well, I've never heard of it._

Then the blond-haired boy said something that made the other laugh, and just like that, Linh knew he had moved on. He didn't need her anymore.

It's good to have a friend in your own level, she convinced herself as she walked away. Especially if that friend is Fitz Vacker.

So she didn't sit with him anymore. But she kept watching him from the corner of her eye. She didn't speak to him anymore. But she saw the Level Twos and even some older prodigies begin to converge around him, asking for homework help, when their Mentors had let slip he was at the top of the class. She didn't smile as he passed by anymore. But she followed him as he slowly slipped out of his shell, first only in front of Fitz, but pretty soon he was cracking jokes in front of the whole class. They thought he was hilarious.

So like a friend, or like the mother he never had, Linh felt pride well up in her chest when Dame Alina announced, _Keefe Sencen, Level Two, has manifested as an Empath._

"You're smiling," Tam had commented so insightfully. "It's creepy."

"Tone it down a bit, will you? I'm sure he can feel your dislike from all the way over there."

One day a storm was raging, really pouring hard. Linh was watching him from the rain-stained window of her Elementalism session as he ran across the courtyard, clutching his notebook under his cape to keep it from being soaked. He slipped on a slick patch of grass and stopped for a moment to get his bearings. A hand emerged from his cape, not holding his book but a long beaded necklace. He held it out to a girl with blonde hair, a girl who didn't wear the Foxfire uniform, and after a moment's hesitation she took the necklace and put it on. Through the rain, Linh could just make out her eyes, which were the color of the bark of Nari's tree —

 _Wait._ Linh rubbed her eyes and the strange girl vanished. The boy righted himself and continued along his path, his hand still firmly underneath his cape. Must have been just another stupid vision.

"What are you looking at?" Sir Astin startled her out of her thoughts.

"Nothing."

Instead of rebuking her for not paying attention, Sir Astin joined Linh at the window. "You know," he said, "you'd think that the rain would keep the birds from flying. But look, they're still out there, even in a storm."

Sure enough, high in the sky, a huge black bird was flying above the courtyard, battling the rain. Its shadow on the ground was like a crooked S, and S with wings . . .

The strings at the sides of Sir Astin's mouth had decided to pull hard. His eyes were twinkling like the stars he studied.

 _They know who you are and what you can do. They tried to kill you today, and they will do it again. They are dangerous — not to be trusted._

"You're with the Black Swan," whispered Linh.

His smile was now a virgin shroud. His eyes were claws skimming a koi pond. "Yes. I am. I've been dropping hints all year, I can't believe you never got them —"

"You sent me those dolls."

Sir Astin's face fell. "What dolls?"

"And then your bird tried to kill me. It tried to kill me but it got Nari instead."

The Universe Mentor's mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, like a letter that could carry any news. What could he say? Linh had believed all this time that the swan had been sent to murder her and had failed . . . but how could he tell her that no, that mission had been completely successful? That the bird had gone with orders to kill and had come back with blood on its talons?

"I know who you are and what you did," she was saying. "I know what those dolls meant. It doesn't take a genius — you want me dead because of my talent."

"We never sent you any dolls," Sir Astin tried. "That was someone else."

"Then I'll go to them," said Linh. "I'll go to them and you won't be able to steal me away. They'll protect me from murderers like you."

She grabbed her bag and walked out, leaving Sir Astin alone. Her face was set like stone but inside her, inside her soul her brother's fire raged. Only it was more like balefire than Tam's inferno — quiet and surrounded by water, but powerful in its own way. Once the door closed behind her, she ran down three flights of stairs and unfurled the last note, the one that said _blood is thicker than water,_ the one she had kept in her pocket for almost a whole year. Linh looked closer and found her hunch to be true — they needed a way for her to find them, of course. She held the paper up to the heavens, the rain soaking it through, and a beam of light appeared just for her. Hundreds of tiny crystals had been mixed into the ink.

A hurricane spun into the world as Linh herself flickered away.

* * *

A man — no, a boy, not much older than Linh herself — was waiting there when she appeared. They were alone in a desert wasteland, complete with sand, lonely rocks, and cactuses. (Her father claimed they were called cacti, but that sounded ridiculous. Cactuses was much better.)

He looked up from his nails, which he was cleaning with a toothpick. The boy was wearing an odd sort of black cloak, but had put back the hood to reveal light brown hair and piercing blue, almost turquoise, eyes. A white eye was pinned onto his sleeve.

She had only been there for a few seconds when the boy started talking in a rusty voice. "You're eleven and a half years old. You're a Level One at Foxfire, but school is easy for you and you feel like you could handle Level Two. You're at the top of your class but you don't brag about it. You pretend that you value your grades over having friends but you truly don't, and wish all the time that someone, anyone, would take an interest in you. You have a father who doesn't love you even when you bring home all 100%'s on your midterms, and your mother is — dead? No, she doesn't understand you. You're very different, and she can't see how you can make the decisions you do and not fade from embarrassment."

Linh had begun preparing to make a comeback, but he was so accurate it was creepy. She let him continue.

"You've always felt like you were the extra, like you didn't belong. I bet your mother didn't even mean to have you, because you have an older brother, although he's not older by much. He's the one your parents care about. You like each other, but you get the feeling he doesn't understand you either. Um, you finally came after almost three years because someone made you mad. Really pissed off. Your hatred is, like, radiating from you with the heat of the sun. That's a kind of hatred I usually save just for myself."

Silence from Linh.

"Well? I was right, wasn't I?"

"No. Who are you?" She wasn't going to satisfy that kid, whoever he was, with the answer he wanted. "And where are we?"

"One, my name is Tristan. And I assume you're Linh Song?" Linh nodded.

"Well, that's good. Now we know each other. Two, we are in the Neutral Territories. This exact spot happens to be a desert. Call it what you want: wasteland, wilderness, badlands. It's kind of like a checkpoint between where you came from and headquarters. An extra security measure, after — well, you don't need to know about that."

Linh remained silent.

"Well? Aren't you going to ask where we're going?"

"No."

"Thanks, I've been talking way too much today." Indeed, Tristan's voice sounded rustier than it had been a few minutes ago. He held up a green crystal. "You're doing us a great favor, Linh. It'll help both of us."

"Wait, that's it?" Linh said. "It's that easy?"

"Look, Linh, it's been a long day, I'm tired, and from the feelings I got from you you don't seem to be a spy. Could we just —" His eyes suddenly widened. "Oh, I forgot. Before we go, I'll need your registry pendant."

Regardless of what her brain said, Linh's hand flew up protectively to the silver cord around her neck.

"It'll be safe," said Tristan. "We just have to leave it here, so the Council can't track us."

 _Safe. Safe. Safe._ The word wrapped her hand in a warm blanket and lifted it to the clasp at the back of her neck. _Safe. Safe. Safe._

 _Safe,_ Tristan's soft gaze whispered.

She undid the clasp.

* * *

A little girl with eyes like melted chocolate and skin the color of coffee and milk leaned over the side of the ML Majlishpur. She stood on tiptoe, peering into the wild abyss of the wide river. Her new clothes were stiff and uncomfortable. All this itching because a woman that her mom had known fifteen, twenty years ago was getting married. Why did she have to be dragged along as well? She had never spoken to the bride, never even seen her save the photo on the "We're Getting Married!" card.

Clutched in her hand was a porcelain doll.

She let her eyes go dreamlike with the incessant itch as white noise, and gazed at her reflection below. Like the coverlet making shapes in the dark, she herself melted away and an eye formed in the water. Then an arm, so it wasn't an eye at all. A torso, then a girl's face. Her hair dissolved into the river. Her eyes were bright, feverish from a disease not spread by air or blood or touch.

On the ship, a hand reached forward and pulled the girl back onto the deck. "Priya!" the mother admonished. "Don't scare me like that!" For Priya had been so entranced by the girl in the river that she had begun to lean against the railing.

So she didn't see Linh Song frown at the split trees making up this crime of nature the humans called a boat. She didn't see her spot the little Subcontinental girl in new clothes that itched and a doll just like hers, a doll that tugged at her heart. She didn't see her harden her eyes and raise her arm up anyway.

No, the last thing Priya saw was the wave that no natural storm could create crashing down. And splinters, splinters everywhere; some much larger than the average splinter.

One smashed into her skull.

* * *

Over the next months, disaster after disaster followed. Flooding in East Africa. Mudslides in Sri Lanka. Hurricanes and tropical storms in the American South. The worst monsoon in years, raging upon China and India. And another sunken ship in the rain-swollen river where the ML Majlishpur had perished.

Terrible accidents. That was all it was.

After all, no one who saw the face in the water lived to tell the tale.

* * *

 _We need her._

 _No, we don't._

The day Linh had left, the two sides of Sir Astin's mind had warred with each other as he sat with his head in his hands. Everything had been going perfectly until he had found out that the Neverseen had been sending Linh those — _things!_ Don't pretend you haven't seen them before, Errol. Don't pretend it's all gone.

Sir Astin had a secret himself, a trunk locked away in his office. A key in the floorboards opens a locked drawer, a locked drawer holds a key which opens a locked trunk. A locked trunk holds a doll, a perfect porcelain doll, pretend there's no cracks from her fingers into her spine, through the back of her skull and carving shapes into her neck, pretend her glass eyes haven't gone milky from age, pretend her dress isn't burned beyond recognition.

The only thing left behind in the ashes.

Just one day before it had all happened, Jolie had shown him the doll. _This is how they enlist them,_ she had said. _If you see anybody with one of these, you have to convince them to run the other direction._

But all he had done was that he helpfully pointed Linh right toward the Neverseen.

It didn't take a genius to guess why they wanted Linh. Truth be told, it was probably the same reason the Black Swan wanted her as well.

 _Lies,_ the doll's milky-white eyes seemed to say. _Lies, lies, lies. Stop lying to yourself like you do with your skin._

 _But we need her._

 _No, we don't._

Double locks for double mocks. Lock her tight up in a box. Drink a draft to hide your mask. Silver cape with silver clasp. Let no one see you slip away.

Master Leto would arrive early that day.

* * *

A/N: Exams are coming up soon, so over the next couple weeks I may not be updating very much or at all. Hopefully this super-long chapter will be enough to satisfy you all until May 20 :P

Oh, and all those natural disasters actually happened, from April-August 2003.


	10. If It Hadn't Been Raining

A/N: You may have noticed that I've changed the rating of _Swan Song_ from K+ to T. I do this a lot in my fanfics, moving the rating up one notch when things start building up to the climax. A lot of my stories start out pretty innocent and then morph into lots of death and darkness. Like a Transformer!

* * *

 **CHAPTER 10**

 **IF IT HADN'T BEEN RAINING**

It was like they were reaching towards the ground, pulling at their cord, weighing down on his neck. Their numbers were so many and they were so strong. And it was more than gravity pulling them down, Tam was sure of it.

He shrugged his shoulders to shift the four strands looped around his neck. It eased the dull ache in his neck that had slowly come to Tam's notice as the days went by, the ache of a thousand beads weighed down with everything he never said. One alone weighed next to nothing. All strung together, he carried the earth around his neck.

He had been wrong, you know. He wore a thousand beads and they all looked different — some red, some blue, some clay, some glass — but the days themselves looked no different than the one before. _If you pointed at a bead and asked what happened this day,_ Tam thought, _I wouldn't be able to answer._

 _Except for that one, of course._

It was a perfect sphere, brown with a faded red stain that was a shade darker than blood. Three beads away from the clasp of the cord. Sometimes Tam felt like it was drilling a hole through the back of his neck. It was the day he had seen Linh with that boy by the ocean.

He remembered that day because he had never seen Tristan again.

Tam had sought out the wooden-haired and rust-voiced boy the next day, the day the tents were tucked away in a lightless forest. But he could not find him, that day or the next or the one after that. Tristan had disappeared.

When he had built up the courage to ask Purple Cloak about it, she had said, "Who cares if that boy's gone? If he can't bother to show up, he doesn't deserve the second chance we so generously offer him."

So it had tugged at him for three years, weighing down that wooden-colored bead with a rust-colored stain. Unlike Linh's dolls, he never forgot about it. Every day, it took all his strength simply to keep his head aloft. So he held his chin high even though it hurt, because he would not be defeated by a single bead, a single face, a single memory that held the weight of the world.

* * *

There was another day, another bead, that Tam would remember forever as well.

How had he happened to be on the other side of the river? Only a week later, he could not remember. It had been raining that day; he had been with Linh, and then she was not there. Where had she gone? Tam knew there must have been a reason, but the memory, like Linh herself, had disappeared into the dark sky.

But the one thing he was sure of was that they had crossed the river _because_ it was raining. It was something trivial; they had been looking for something that had to be protected from the rain, or something he had left behind.

What Tam was sure of was that if it hadn't been raining, none of this would have happened.

* * *

It was so dark — Tam couldn't see. He had pulled his hood low over his face, which stopped the rain from stabbing at his eyes but prevented him from seeing anything but his shoes. His head was down and he was walking fast. Looking for Linh, always looking for Linh —

 _She should be back by now where is she is she afraid she's alone all alone why did you leave her all alone in the rain —_

Tam, however, wasn't alone.

 _She's all alone why isn't she back what if something's happened to her —_

Looking for Linh, his steps suddenly slowed when his shoes met mud. A fog came over his thoughts for a moment, and when the fog dissipated he was sinking into the mud, but his mind was clear.

 _She's probably in Wildwood. If she went back, I doubt Sadysa would have let her leave in this weather. There's nothing to worry about. She's perfectly safe._

He should head home too. Tam pulled his shoes out of the soggy ground with a squelch and saw the river was in his line of sight. He could use the stepping-stones, only a short walk away. It was dangerous to be out in this storm. And anyway, Linh was fine. She had to be.

 _I doubt Sadysa would have let her leave . . . I doubt . . . doubt . . ._

 _Safe._

 _Doubt._

 _SAFE._

The word was forcing itself into Tam's mind. It wasn't his own thinking that was doing it, it was someone else's. He grabbed his temples and flung the falsity from his mind.

"Damn!" a disembodied voice shouted. Then an _oof_ and a _thump_.

Tam spun around, his paranoia in full force again. Thoughts that weren't his, a voice that wasn't his — what was going on? He reflexively reached a hand into his pocket, where his blue crystal — a little scratched and worn but still in working condition — lay.

"Who's there?" he shouted back. Tam lifted his face to the rain. "Show yourself!"

The shape of an elf, blurred by the rain, pulled itself out of the boggy ground behind him. They slowly stood up, wiped off their face with the back of their hand, and spat out a mouthful of mud. Then they — no, he — put his hands in the air in a shrug-like gesture, like he was saying, _You caught me._

Tam's mouth fell open.

So did the other boy's, when his eyes traveled down to Tam's ability pin. His smirk disappeared into a scowl, exactly the same as Tam remembered it.

"Where've you been these three years?" said Tam, the smirk respawning on his own face. " _Tristan._ "

"How do you know my —" Tristan stopped. If anything, puberty and the rain had made his voice even more rusty than before. "Never mind. That doesn't matter." He pulled a melder from his cloak and pointed it at Tam's chest. "Take me to the Moonlark or suffer the consequences."

Well, _that_ escalated quickly. Tam blinked hard, twice. The first time because of disbelief, the second time to get rid of the rain in his eyes. "Wait, _what?_ "

The hand holding the melder was trembling. "I said, take me to the Moonlark or suffer the consequences. Where are you hiding her?"

Tam felt strangely calm about the whole thing. Maybe he was in shock. After all, some kid he hadn't seen in three years suddenly showed up and pointed a melder at his head, saying some nonsense about a bird? — all in less than three minutes. Or maybe it was because he was used to much worse than the prospect of imminent paralysis and possible death. It was an occupational hazard of attending Exillium. All you needed to know was the right way to deal with it.

"I don't know what you're talking about. There's no bird here."

"Don't deny it!" shouted Tristan. "I'm not afraid to use this!"

"You know, you really shouldn't lie to your friend's brother. It's bad form." Tam began to walk backwards, slowly. With every step that he took, Tristan advanced as well.

"Shut up, Tam. Where is the Moonlark?"

"I told you, I have no clue what you're talking about." Another step backward. Another step forward.

"We believe that your sister, and possibly you, have been sheltering the Moonlark since her disappearance from the Lost Cities yesterday."

Tam nodded like he had the foggiest idea what Tristan was saying. _Stall, stall, stall . . ._ "'We'? Who's this 'we' that you're referring to?" Another step. Just a little ways to go.

Tristan tore a patch from his sleeve, leaving a safety pin shimmering silver. "This! I said I'm not afraid, and I wasn't lying. _We — fear — nothing._ You're the one who should be scared of _us!_ "

Tam's feet stopped moving. A patch. A white eye. A jagged hole where it had been ripped from its moorings. His breath caught in his throat. _Hadn't seen for three years . . ._

"It's not her fault," Tam lied. "It wasn't her choice. And we don't have the — moonlark, is that what you said? — anymore. It's gone. Forever."

Tristan snarled, and Tam began to feel uneasy. The melder wasn't shaking as much anymore. Another step back, a larger one this time, and Tam's shoe sank an inch into mud to rest on cold rock. The stepping-stones were a stride away.

"Don't you know you shouldn't lie to your sister's friend?" said Tristan. "You have five seconds to tell me where you're hiding that little brown-eyed freak show. Don't make me count down."

"Oh, I won't."

 _Five_ , they both counted in their heads.

One more step, twisting his foot behind the other and dragging it along the riverbank.

 _Four._

The melder was shaking again, perhaps at the prospect of imminent paralysis and possible death, and Tam found what he was looking for. He shifted, ever so slightly, and he noticed something odd that the other boy had been too far away to see before. One of Tristan's eyes was flecked with brown.

 _Three._

"Tristan, I have one question for you."

"Better make it short."

 _Two._

"Can you swim?"

 _One._

A step back, a final step forward, and the rock under Tristan's feet gave way in a shower of pebbles. He gasped in shock as the current dragged him under. Tam hoped the swollen river would carry Tristan far, far away, perhaps all the way to Ravagog. That was where his green pendant took him, after all.

Tristan's head broke the surface and he gasped for breath. Tam watched from the riverbank, the indifferent orchestrator, the blameless defendant. Tristan clawed at the nearest stepping-stone, needing to grab onto something lest the current drag him away. The stones were slick and slippery from the storm. They would not hold. He slipped under and came back up again. And in one last, desperate act, Tristan flung himself at the stone, arms outstretched.

One mistake is all it takes. One small, unimportant mistake. It was the timing, you see. He got the timing all wrong, that's what Tam told himself every day after that.

He slipped — he jerked — his head snapped back with a sickening crack of rock against bone.

 _Oh no._

No, that didn't really cover it.

 _Oh no oh no oh no oh NO._

Tam hurried out of the river like it was poisonous. Blood was seeping into the water, staining the stepping-stones until vermillion waves came to wash it away. The patch loosed itself from Tristan's cold hand and floated down the current, following a trail of blood.

"Help!" screamed Tam. "Somebody help!" But his voice was carried away by the current, the tempest, the howling wind.

Then Tristan himself began to float away. As his body was tugged free from the rock, he turned over, his black cloak spreading wide in the water like the wings of death himself. Tam was almost thankful. He didn't want to have to look into those dead, almost-elvin eyes anymore.

Tam couldn't remember the last time he had cried. It was a weakness, an incapability to operate in the face of disaster. He almost didn't remember how to cry. But alone on the eleven hundred eighty-ninth day, Tam fell to his knees and sobbed into the storm.

All this because it was raining.

* * *

A/N: I might do a spinoff of this about Tristan. I don't know . . . he's pretty much my favorite OC that I've ever created and there's just so much of his story that I'm not going to be able to explain in this fanfic because he's only here for like three chapters. Would you guys read it if I wrote one?

Please remember to review! Thanks!


	11. Worthless

A/N: Sorry for the long wait, I've been afflicted with an unfortunate case of the dreaded writer's block. (Wow, that was a drawn-out way of saying I was too lazy to write for two weeks.) I hid another LTSF reference in this chapter, so see if you can spot it. (It's pretty obvious.)

* * *

 **CHAPTER 11**

 **WORTHLESS**

Linh ducked out of the shop, a book tucked under one arm. It had been risky coming here, a good thirty minutes' walk from her rendezvous with Tristan, but when she had seen the bookshop on the map Linh _had_ to take a little detour. Anyway, she was safe. She had a leaping crystal hidden inside her clenched fist.

She checked her watch, a useful little human trinket that let her wear the hour on her wrist. Twenty-five minutes until she and Tristan were supposed to meet. She'd better get going.

At 11:30 AM sharp, Linh arrived in the Harrison Canyon Park, a little out of breath — she had run the last three blocks. She looked around. Tristan was nowhere to be found.

"Tristan?" she called out. She took off her hood and stood on tiptoe, trying to find a flash of rust-red in the sea of humans milling about the grass. No such luck.

Suddenly, a hand gripped her shoulder. Linh screamed, dropping her crystal. She flung her book upwards to protect her face and took a step backwards, wincing as she felt the awful crunch of quartz under the heel of her boot.

"Hold up, it's just me. Are you always so jittery?" At the sound of his voice, Linh relaxed. Tristan plucked the book from her hands and examined it, unimpressed. "Really? Another one?"

"Last one, I promise. I've got all thirty-seven now." said Linh, reaching for the book. But Tristan held it up over his head and turned it to a random page.

" 'How does he love me? With adoration, with fertile tears, with groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.' You read _this?_ "

With a jump, Linh snatched the volume back. "It's art, Tristan. You wouldn't understand."

"I will never understand why you read such sappy garbage."

" 'There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.' That was _Hamlet_ , if you must know."

"Whatever you say. But Lady Gisela won't be happy if she finds out you're using our missions to steal plays. Human plays, at that."

"I'm not stealing them. I paid for every single one, fair and square. And for your information, I completed the mission just fine."

"I know. News about the flooding is already coming in." Tristan gestured to the BlackBerry phone in his palm. "Amazing what these humans come up with, isn't it? I can carry their Internet thingy wherever I go!"

The light sparkled in his eyes, making them look like moonstones flecked with gold. They were full of sun so bright that not a single corner of his eyes was in darkness.

It scared her.

"Hey, something wrong?" Linh's smile had faded.

"You just . . . remind me of my brother. In a way. It's complicated."

"Huh. Maybe — maybe you could introduce us sometime. Bring him — here," said Tristan, tripping over the words hidden in double-cloakings. "I'd like to meet him."

"We should go back." Linh said abruptly, gestured in the general direction of her watch without looking at it. "We're late." She reached for the pendant around her neck, then remembered with horror that it was lying in pieces on the ground.

"Tristan, my crystal —"

"No problem. You can just use mine this time. And anyway," he added, staring at her with that warm moonstone gaze, "you won't be needing it anymore." He smiled.

As Tristan held his pathfinder to the light, Linh couldn't help thinking that there was something off about him. The way his eyes only reflected light, rather than both illumination and shadow.

* * *

Linh turned away, hiding in the shadows. She pulled her hood down over her face to blend into the darkness as the click of high-heeled shoes passed by.

Why had she hidden? Linh wasn't sure. All she knew was that when she heard Lady Gisela coming, she hadn't wanted to be seen. So she had slipped into this little corner.

There were two other pairs of shoes along with Lady Gisela's, both heavier-soled boots. Lady Gisela was speaking to one of them.

"We don't have much more time," she said. "Alden's very close to finding her. Hasn't Fitz been missing a lot of school lately, sweetheart?"

There was a pause that could only mean the smaller set of shoes was nodding.

Curious, Linh lifted up her hood to see better. Two quiet gasps echoed simultaneously as blue eyes met.

Thankfully, the two adults hadn't noticed her. Linh put a finger to her lips, and Keefe nodded ever so slightly.

"What was that, Keefe?" asked Lady Gisela.

"Nothing," he lied. "I thought I saw — a bat."

"Hmm." His mother frowned. "Gethen, I have news that would be best discussed in private. It's about —" She whispered in Gethen's ear, and Linh was too far away to make out the words.

The sound of three pairs of shoes began to fade. They were walking away.

What news did she have that was so secret? _We don't keep any secrets here; that's the Council's job_ was one of the first things Tristan had said to her. But Lady Gisela and Gethen obviously knew something that they didn't want to share.

And Keefe's presence had unnerved her. Not that he was there — Linh should have guessed he was part of his mother's plans — but how he had looked at her. Like he didn't recognize her at all.

Like he had forgotten everything.

Linh blinked a few tears from her eyes and formed a saltwater ball. Then she separated the ball into two smaller ones.

"Follow them," she whispered, and set one ball rolling. This was a trick she had learned from the Neverseen's Guster, a girl named Audra. Once Linh's water-ball reached Lady Gisela et al, she would be able to hear their whole conversation.

The water-ball still in Linh's hands quivered and shook.

It had found what it was looking for.

* * *

 _We're running out of time, Gethen._

 _We don't know that. Alden could be bluffing, like he was seven years ago._

 _Hmm._ A pause. _Brown eyes, you said?_

 _I'm certain of it. Why do you keep asking me this?_

 _Anomalies . . . can sometimes happen. Too soon to tell for sure, but we need to do_ something _, Gethen._

 _The Initiative isn't ready, then?_

 _If it was, we would not be having this conversation._

 _What do you suggest, my lady?_

 _The girl. Our Hydrokinetic. She's been with us for what, six months now?_

 _Eight._

A sigh. _Sooner than I wanted — she may discern something. Get her to bring her brother, Gethen. The Shade._

 _The Shade — why do we want him, exactly?_

 _He's been our mission since his father married that mute doll! We need a Shade, Gethen. It's the last piece of the Initiative. Make sure Linh convinces him to join us, and brings him to the meeting place in Atlantis. Then let our Washer clean up whatever she may have discovered._

"She's not mute," whispered Linh, even though she knew Lady Gisela couldn't hear her.

 _But — what about Linh? You said we needed her as well._

 _Only until we get her brother. After that, she's expendable._

* * *

 _Expendable._

The word echoed in Linh's ears as she staggered out of her hiding place. Eight months of being told she was special, and suddenly she was _expendable_.

 _Replaceable._

 _Disposable._

 _Worthless._

"Worthless," she said out loud. The word sounded like peanut butter stuck in her throat, a wave breaking miles from shore, a heavy sigh.

Then she thought of pulling a golden ball from a princess's pond, and bringing down splinters and blood with a wave of her arm, and the Council's shocked faces.

"Am I worthless, Lady Gisela?" said Linh. "Or are you just afraid of me?"

She took her book in her hands and flipped to a random page.

 _Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them._

Linh smiled. Greatness would not be thrust upon her. She would find it herself.

She would show Lady Gisela she was anything but worthless.

And she would show her that she had heard her little conversation, too.

 _Thank you, William Shakespeare._

* * *

 _One day you'll find me gone._

 _You'll wake up late because I won't be there to fling open the blinds at sunrise, and you'll know before you open your eyes that I'm not there. And you'll look all over for me but what can one elf do? No one else will care, they'll notice I'm gone but they'll shrug and say good riddance. You'll have at most an hour to search for me before they yell to put on your uniform and drag you to school. You have a future, after all. You'll be at the top of the class, and if you're careful you'll stay there. You'll graduate, move on to the elite levels, wear a cape and live in a city made of jewels and maybe even put a jet-stone circlet on your head. You never wanted to get married, anyway._

 _Because life goes on. You'll keep my picture in a frame at your bedside. You'll wish for me to come back every night for a few months, and then one day you'll forget to wish and that'll be that. And in six years you'll be packing up your things to move to the Gold Tower and you'll find the picture under your bed, a little cracked and a little worn. You'll see your sister, and a stranger. Like — like you're looking into the past through a crystal vase, and you can't see the elf you knew through all the cracks. But you'll remember the note I left on the floor, the letter that explained everything. And you'll wonder what I'm doing now._

 _I'm not the person you think I am. One day not so long ago, I went to a wasteland where I met a boy. I took off my registry pendant and we leaped to a place I can't tell you. To tell you would be to betray them, betray a group of people who, in a few short months, became my family more than Mother or Father ever were._

 _But before, they sent me dolls. They hid them in trees, inside my pillowcase, even at the bottom of the koi pond. And with each doll came a note. I didn't understand the notes at first — just arcane drivel. But if I let the sweat drip into my eyes as I struggled up the alder tree to untangle the doll from its branches, I could see something a bit different. Máu là dày hơn nhiều so với nước. You know what that means._

 _I went to them because I was angry, and I was angry because I had been lied to. It was raining, and I let the rain catch the light and the light catch the ink and I went to them. (Funny how it always seems to be raining around here. Almost like it's a metaphor for something.) They were kind to me; they never said a harsh word. They were honey-sweet and I was the bird entranced by its smell. Lord Cassius's wife was with them (you know, the one that Mother used to have over until they had a fight and Mother got so mad that she broke a plate), and some others we know were there too, and they showed me a picture._

 _It was a tree growing out of the sea. It reminded me of Nari's tree at first; below was red like blood. I thought it was beautiful. They scoffed when I said that, and said Nari had thought it was beautiful too, whatever that meant. Then they explained that it wasn't a tree, it was an explosion. An explosion created by humans, that killed over two hundred thousand of their own kind. It's hard to believe that any intelligent species would build something like that. I don't even know now whether it was true or whether they just made it up to scare me._

 _Well, it didn't scare me. I was angry already, remember, and all it did was make me angrier. Twenty thousand, they said. Humans had made twenty thousand of those things. Enough to obliterate the whole world twice over, and I could save the planet by obliterating the humans. Soon I was blind, blind to reason, blind to anything but the balefire taking control inside of me._

 _They showed me to a ship. Well, not a ship, really more of a boat. They didn't even have to tell me what to do. I sunk it without question._

 _I'm simply explaining the what, but not trying to justify the why. I can never justify the why. I killed hundreds of people, and what does it matter if they were innocent or not? I took lives. And this seems like a good place to say that the Council is lying to you, lying to you all. An elf is perfectly capable of killing hundreds of people, if they have balefire in their soul and believe they are doing the right thing. You'd be surprised what an elf can do without breaking._

 _So I'm leaving. Not leaving them; I'm leaving Thorndale. Forever. I'm going to a jeweled city, where I will wear a cape of white horses and sapphires will finally grace my forehead._

 _And I'm not coming back._

* * *

Linh put down her pen and read over her words. Then she read them a second time, and a third.

She crumpled up the letter and ground it into the dirt beneath her feet.

He wouldn't understand. No one would understand. Even she didn't fully understand. But she needed — she needed to do _something_.

Linh stood up and walked to Nari's tree (which was still more of a sapling than a full-grown tree), until she was close enough that she stood inside the circle of red grass.

"Tell me what to do, Nari," she murmured. "I can't stay, but I don't want to leave you. Where I'm going, I'll miss you and your tree. I wish you could see it, Nari. I wish you could see how beautiful you are."

The slender leaves rustled in the wind.

 _Nari had thought it was beautiful too._

Linh shivered, hoping the horrible thought that had come to her mind wasn't true. Cautiously, she put a hand against Nari's trunk. Her fingers moved of their own accord, tracing a pattern in the rough bark.

That blasted doll's eye.

* * *

A/N: I HATE MOTIVES I CAN NEVER THINK OF ANY HALFWAY DECENT ONES MFFFFFFFFFFF


	12. Kill It With Fire

A/N: I'm back! :) I'm sincerely so sorry I haven't updated for over a month. I've had a lot of things on my plate and just had no time to write. Thankfully, though, I was on a six-hour plane flight today, and got this chapter and half of the next finished! Here's Ch12 — enjoy!

* * *

 **CHAPTER 12**

 **KILL IT WITH FIRE**

The sharp crack as a head snapped backward. The light from a golden brown eye flickering out. Blood mixing with rain.

The patch lying on top of the stepping-stone slick with the echoes of death, staring at Tam like an unblinking eye.

 _What have I done?_

He lifted his face from the mud and took a deep, shuddering breath. He wiped the tears from his face to be replaced by rain.

 _Self-defence. It wasn't my fault, it was self-defence. He was holding a melder. He could have killed me. He_ would _have killed me . . ._

 _My fault, my fault, my fault._

His thoughts spun in a circle, spurred by panic and that cursed eye-patch with its infinite gaze.

 _My fault, my fault, my fault._

The breath caught in Tam's throat as the world began to spin, mimicking his scattered thoughts. The river and sky blurred together, until he could not tell where one element ended and the other began.

 _My fault, all my fault — what have I done — blood mixing with rain — the wings of death — floating home to Ravagog — a plague, a plague on both your houses — something Linh would say —_

 _Linh._

His racing thoughts halted, and the world stopped spinning. Linh — where was she? He had never found her — was she safe? Or was she lost in this rainstorm, looking for him far away?

"Linh?" he called out, but his voice was carried away by the wind. "Linh, where are you?" Tam cried, hovering precariously close to the river's edge.

"Tam?" a voice answered. _Her_ voice. Tam sank to his knees in relief.

"Don't worry, Tam! I'm coming over!" The river rose into an arc above the now-dry bed. The stepping-stones became pillars instead of drops of rough — too-rough — rock. And on the other side, hovering at the edge as a twin image of her brother, was Linh.

Seeing Tam collapsed in the grass, Linh hastened across the riverbed and took his face in her hands.

"Tam? What's wrong? Are you hurt?"

The world had begun spinning again, the droplets of rain swelling until they touched, creating an unbreakable sheet of water. Behind the smeary sweep of sky, Linh looked fractured and blurred. She pounded the barrier with her hand, trying to get in.

"Stop the rain," he groaned. "Linh, stop the rain."

Linh shook her head and said something that Tam couldn't quite catch. "I can't — too much —"

 _I can't, I can't, I can't._

"Can't — can't —" he repeated. "Can't get out." Tam pounded the barrier until blood welled from his palms, to no avail. Finally, he balled up his fist and punched the transparent wall as hard as he could.

But his outstretched fist met no barrier. It had seemingly disappeared. He heard an ugly crack, and Linh staggered backward and lost her balance. She stumbled blindly, clutching her nose which was gushing two thick streams of red.

Tam realized two things in that moment.

There had never been any barrier. It was all in his fractured mind. The raindrops weighing down on his shoulders? Not raindrops at all, but the resolute hands of his twin, trying to bring him back.

And speaking of his sister, Linh was about to stumble right into the ravine, the dry ravine with stone monuments, coated in sacrifices for an unforgiving god.

 _Not again —_

He was still in shock from realization number one, and could do nothing as his sister's feet met loose rock, sending showers of gravel into the riverbed. But Linh, even blind as she was, knew the river better than Tam ever had. She found sure footing quickly.

The shock slowly drained from Tam's body, and he fell to his knees in exhaustion. Now that it was gone, the adrenaline seemed to have been replaced by something else. He felt fragile; he felt frail. Like he was barely held together by sanity's tenuous grip, and this was his first glimpse into a different world, a future world, a world where he was —

 _Broken._

 _You'd be surprised what an elf can do without breaking._

Linh had made her way back to where Tam knelt in the dirt, and she gently took his hand in hers. Tam was afraid to grasp her hand too hard; he was afraid the pressure could shatter his own hand into a million pieces. He was fragile, and she was tough as stone.

No fear reflected in Linh's eyes. Instead, she looked pitying, and — was that _fury?_ What cause did she have to be angry?

Linh pressed her lips together, her other hand pinching the bridge of her nose. Tam felt a pang of guilt — he had punched her, albeit by accident.

But she didn't stare pointedly at him. She didn't give a dramatic sigh and say something about the horrible state of her nose. In fact, she didn't say anything that Tam, after fourteen years of knowing her, would have expected. Actions do speak more clearly than the sophistication of speech.

Instead, Linh pulled her twin to his feet.

"We have to go home."

* * *

 _Should I tell her? Should I not?_ Tam thought as they walked through the woods. Linh had managed to divert most of the rain away from them, so although the storm continued to rage, the two remained, for the most part, dry. They walked in silence, Tam having to jog sometimes to stay at pace with Linh.

 _Should I tell her?_

She never looked at him, the whole way back to the Wildwood Colony (which Tam had stopped calling Gnomeville a long time ago). At first Tam had thought she was just angry at him, but the faster she walked, and the more he fell behind, the more he suspected there was something Linh had to get home to, and quickly.

 _Should I not?_

When they reached the edge of the forest village, the storm finally abated. The gray clouds parted to reveal a bright blue sky; it was only the middle of the day, Tam was surprised to find. It had seemed like night.

Tam's attention, most of it anyway, wasn't on the sky, however. It was what had blanched Linh's features and drawn her face into an unreadable expression.

The woods were silent.

No wind rustled through the trees. No branches swayed and creaked with age. Even the last few falling raindrops didn't balance on the rim of the leaves, like they always did. They fell straight down, some of the leaves even fluttering limply to the ground under the weight of a single drop.

Everything was so still, so silent, that Tam felt like he was standing in a photograph. No sound, no movement; not even a breath, a whisper, a ripple through the trees.

 _I should NOT_ , Tam decided.

"What —" he began, the sound of his voice cutting through this unnatural stillness.

"— happened?" Linh finished. "There's something evil in Wildwood. It's killing the trees. Sadysa — Sadysa has taken ill."

 _A plague, a plague on both your houses . . ._

"Like a plague," said Tam.

Linh nodded. "Like a plague."

* * *

When the twins entered the village, the first thing they saw was the emptiness. Where there was usually a flurry of bustling activity, there was not a single gnome in sight. Add that to the unnatural silence of the trees, and the whole situation was extremely unnerving. The only sound was that of Tam and Linh's boots crunching the fallen dead leaves on the ground.

"No," Linh choked out. She dashed to the nearest hut and looked inside. The windows were all dark; Tam could tell without looking that there was no one left in the colony. Other than them, that is.

Frantic, Linh flung open the door to the next hut, and the one after that. Nothing, nothing at all.

"Is anybody here?" she called out.

Here, here, here, her echo replied. There was no answer.

Linh seemed stricken. Her face had gone ashen, like how she would look if a rug had been pulled out from underneath her feet. She couldn't believe, Tam thought, that after three years of steadfast security, the gnomes could just _leave_.

"They're gone, Linh." It came out more harshly than he wanted. "It's not safe here anymore."

"Then where is it safe?" cried Linh. "Not the Lost Cities, not school, and now not here. Where is safety? Where can I find it? Will I have to chase it for eternity, all the way to the ends of the earth? Does it even _exist_ anymore?"

"No, Linh." Tam thought of blood mixing with rain and floating down a river. "Not for us. Not anymore."

Linh gave no sign that she had heard him at all. She just kept staring forward, as if in a trance.

 _Stumbling back from stepping-stones . . ._

She stumbled, looking down at the ground in surprise, like she hadn't noticed it was there before. She staggered her way to the ashy fire-pit. She sat down gingerly; Tam noticed she was taking care to keep her hands away from rocks.

"What are you doing?"

"I will wait for the gnomes to come back." Linh closed her eyes and took a breath. "I will not go chasing them. I will wait."

She looked nine years old again, sitting in silence in a too-high chair with all twelve Councillors' eyes on her.

"I will wait," she repeated.

It was too much for Linh, and too much for him as well. "They're not coming back!" he shouted. "They're never coming back! You'll be waiting forever!"

She stood up, tears in her eyes. "I don't care! I'm waiting for them, even if they never come back! You don't understand; you're so selfish, you never do anything if it doesn't benefit yourself."

Tam didn't respond. Instead, he reached down and picked a twig from the ground. It had broken from a dead tree, and had an odd reddish tinge at the ends.

He strode to the remains of the fire-pit and prodded the ashes until the twig caught fire.

"What are you doing?" she echoed.

He touched his makeshift torch to the nearest hut, and the dead wood was quickly set alight. It shriveled under the burning stare of fire.

"That's Sadysa's — Tam, _stop!_ " Linh raised an arm to put out the flames, but the river was too far away for her to use. Sadysa's hut, built in the shade of two trees, was soon completely consumed by flames. The dead trees beside it caught fire as well, a burning branch fell onto the roof of another hut, and soon the whole village was burning in a ring of fire around Tam and Linh.

"We know nothing about this plague, Linh," said Tam. "It could spread to us. It may have already. But chances are we haven't, and we can't risk exposing ourselves to the plague."

"So you're just going to destroy it?" Linh gestured with her arm to the burning village. "You're just going to kill everything?"

"The trees were dying anyway."

"So if all the creatures in the Lost Cities were dying from some illness, and you were the last healthy person alive, you would just kill all of them? All the animals and the goblins and the gnomes? Would you kill your friends? Would you kill _me?_ "

"That's . . . different."

"Because the lives of people are somehow worth more than the lives of trees? They feel, Tam. They feel love and joy and pain. Have you not heard their songs?"

"I didn't say that. What I meant was . . . I could never kill an elf. And that has nothing to do with which lives are worth more." _I could never kill an elf,_ he wanted to say, _because after Tristan, I never want to watch the light leaving someone's eyes again._

But of course, he couldn't say that.

Tam expected Linh to say he was lying, that he obviously thought elvin lives were more important than trees. Instead, she didn't say anything for a while, just stood there with her mouth open like she wanted to tell him something.

"It's easier than you think," she finally said. "Killing . . . someone."

 _Should I tell her? Should I not?_

"I know," he replied.

* * *

A/N: I'll try to post Ch13 soon. Not going to reveal anything, but I'm really really excited to finish it!


	13. Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος

A/N: Here it is, the chapter you've all been waiting for . . . ATLANTIS ! ! ! I have nothing to say, other than: Have fun!

* * *

 **CHAPTER 13**

 **Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος**

Nari was with the Neverseen.

Suddenly it all made sense.

 _He's been our mission since his father married . . . Nari had thought it was beautiful too . . . You will manifest your special ability soon . . ._

She must have triggered it. Linh's manifestation had happened two years before anyone else in her class. It was all Nari's doing — Alvar's dolls, the crystal vase, the dreams . . .

What had she said? _Dreams are reality's offspring. They reflect into our eyes the truths we cannot see._

Reflections.

Through a reflection, Linh had seen the gnome for who she was. She had seen the swan a second before it struck; she was just too trusting to wonder why the vase had shown her that image.

She leaned her head against Nari's knobbly bark, unsure of what to think or what to feel. Had the old gnome ever loved her at all? Or was it all just a ploy to get Tam?

As she ruminated, Linh realized that the garden had gone very silent. She jerked her head upward, leaving a stinging scratch on her forehead, then left the garden on quiet feet to look for her mother.

She found Thanh Song at the gate of Thorndale, a hand on the latch. She wore a sun-yellow dress with a matching cape, and strings of yellow topaz were threaded through her hair. Linh touched the blood on her forehead and ran her fingers through her own rough hair, dip-dyed sky blue. In the presence of her mother, she always felt inadequate, like an ugly duckling next to a beautiful swan.

Linh wondered where Thanh was going. It was unlike her mother to leave without telling the twins where she was going first — and now that Nari was gone, she hardly ever left Tam and Linh alone in the house.

"Mother, where are you going?"

Thanh Song gasped and dropped her handbag. She bent down to pick it up and came back up looking red and flustered.

"Linh! You surprised me."

"Where are you going?"

Her mother quickly regained her composure. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Don't lie to me, Mother."

"How did you become so impudent? It certainly wasn't anything _I_ ever taught you."

 _The Neverseen,_ Linh almost said, just for the pleasure of seeing her mother confused. But she didn't.

When no answer came from her daughter, Thanh relented. "I was . . . going to Idelia's." Idelia was a long-time friend of Linh's mother's. "She invited me over to do some shopping together in Atlantis, and well, I thought Tam was old enough to take care of you both now, at least for a little while. I miss being able to do what I like. You children weigh me down."

"Atlantis?" A jewel of a plan formed in Linh's mind. "Can I come with you?" _If you say yes,_ she pleaded silently, _I will pretend that I didn't hear what you said about Tam being the one to take care of me. Or the part where you said we weigh you down. Stars, do you even know what comes out of your own mouth sometimes?_

Thanh's brow furrowed. "Why?"

"Oh, I don't know." Linh twisted her hands behind her back. "I just thought we could go shopping together. As a sort of . . . mother-daughter thing." _Like she's going to believe_ that.

An odd expression came over her mother's face, and Linh watched in wonder as a thousand different emotions washed over it at once. Thanh Song put a hand to her lips and looked at Linh with what may have been astonishment, or gratitude, or even love.

"Of course," she whispered, and held out her hand. With relief, her daughter took it.

* * *

It was so strange, Linh marveled, being alone with her mother. It was like being in a dream. Most mothers must have taken their daughters shopping dozens of times, but Thanh had never taken Linh, not once. The whole experience was wholly foreign to Linh — Idelia fawning over her, a warm half-luster pressed into her palm, stepping underneath the biggest Leapmaster she had ever seen.

But what was even stranger was that for the first time in Linh's short life, Thanh seemed happy. To most she would seem calm and composed, but Linh could see that she was positively giddy with glee.

 _Is this really making her that happy?_ thought Linh as her mother placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. _I've never seen her like this before._

She wasn't like that because of the prospect of shopping, Linh knew. It was being with her daughter that made her beam with joy. It made Linh feel almost guilty about what she was going to do next.

 _Congratulations_ , her mind heard a younger version of Tam say, in that singsong-y voice he used to use back then.

Linh looked up at her smiling mother and wished she felt like congratulations.

* * *

They entered a world made of water.

Linh had never been to Atlantis before — for good reason. She had never even seen a picture, and here it was right before her. She felt the ocean surging all around the force field. She felt its indomitable, untamable power.

With a giddy smile matching her mother's, Linh raced to the edge of the city and pressed her hand against the glass-smooth force field. A school of colorful fish swam by, leaving a trail of bubbles in their wake. One stayed behind and swam up to the force field, so close that Linh could see its individual scales. It pressed its snout up against Linh's palm, then swam away to rejoin its family. Linh gave a little wave as it left, then just for fun, sent an actual wave through the sea to nudge the little fish back on course.

"Linh!" Her mother yanked her back sharply. "Don't do that. We don't want any accidents today."

"Let her enjoy herself, will you," said Idelia, smiling at Linh the way someone would smile at a fluffy bunny. "She's never been to Atlantis before."

The word Atlantis made Linh remember why she was there, and she surreptitiously looked around. Gethen and Lady Gisela could be anywhere in the city; how was she ever going to find them?

A glint of reflected balefire turned her attention to a building in the distance made entirely of jewels — sapphires, jade, and others Linh didn't know the name of and had no idea even existed.

 _But she knew this building._

She had seen a tidal wave tumble over it, sending the building crashing to the ground, through a crystal vase.

That was where she had to go.

She tugged on Thanh Song's hand. "What's that building? Can we go?"

"That's the Jewel of the Pacific," said Idelia. "Your daughter has good taste, Thanh."

Her mother looked torn. "I'd rather . . ." She trailed off, gazing longingly at the brightly colored shops to their right.

"That's okay. I can go alone," said Linh, feeling secretly relieved. "I'll meet you back here at . . . oh, how about five o'clock?" She hurried down the cobbled street without waiting for an answer. The sooner she got this done, the better. The guilt was beginning to set in like a stone in her stomach.

Linh put up the hood of her cape to hide her face, and ducked into a side alleyway to avoid being seen. It was like being on another Neverseen mission — except this time she was working against the Neverseen, not for them.

"Welcome to the Jewel of the Pacific!" a hawker wearing a blue uniform advertised outside the jeweled building. "Take a tour in the one and only under-sea elvin tunnel, and watch the magnificent fauna of the ocean up close!"

"How much time can I get for a half luster?" Linh asked.

"An hour," the blue-clad elf replied.

 _I won't need that much time,_ Linh thought as she handed the money over, _but I might as well get spend everything I have. I won't be needing any money after this._ The realization set in like her guilt and it registered, for the first time, what she was really going to do.

Even a Hydrokinetic cannot breathe miles beneath the surface of the sea.

For a second, Linh had to remind herself why she was doing this.

She was doing this because she was angry, and she was angry because she had been lied to.

She took a deep breath and went into the sea tunnel.

* * *

No one else was taking a tour of the Jewel today. Linh was alone, in a quietness wholly unlike anything she had experienced before. When her mother made a place silent, it was as if the whole world was holding its breath, waiting for Thanh Song to release her hold on them. The hush of the ocean was quite different. Everything was so alive — the marbled currents, the brightly colored fish, the see-through jellyfish whose tentacles looked like ribbons of tulle. And Linh felt an intense tugging inside of her coming from the very bottom of her heart, a longing to reach the great expanse of water separated from her by only a fragile force field.

Linh pressed a hand to the glass, letting the need fill her up and channel into her fingers. The force field began to grow warm where it met her skin.

Something was knocked over outside the open door of the jeweled building, and the force field instantly grew cold again. Linh scowled. The silence was now broken by angry voices outside — it seemed like whoever was there had broken something valuable. She closed her eyes, blocked out the sound, and tried again.

Nothing happened.

Linh opened her eyes, disappointed. Had she lost it already?

No. She would not fail. She could do this. She closed her eyes again and focused all her thoughts and feelings on the force field in front of her.

 _I need the ocean it's right there come to me break the barrier I need you . . ._

A tiny crack formed beneath Linh's index finger but she didn't notice, so hard was she concentrating.

The crack widened, and a salty drop of water squeezed its way through the impenetrable force field.

 _Plink._

 _Plink, plink, plink._

Linh heard the sound, but she didn't stop concentrating. _I need it I want it let me feel the ocean . . . SHATTER . . ._

Subconsciously she whispered the last word, and at that moment the force field came crumbling down in a

shower

of

stars

and

sea.

* * *

Linh was swept off her feet by the wave and right before she went under, she saw what caused the disturbance outside.

In one split second, she saw _her mother_ standing at the entrance to the tunnel, arms outstretched.

Thanh Song pushed her hands forward like she was conducting an invisible orchestra, and a great boom echoed through Atlantis as the deluge was held back by a wall of sound waves.

Then Linh went under, and her mind was cloudy and she couldn't wonder at how her mother had done that. It didn't even register that she was going to drown.

All she could think was, _I did it._

* * *

A/N: Phew.


	14. Poisoned Pronoun

A/N: Sorry for the long wait. Here's the thing: I hate this story. And I don't mean I'm annoyed it's taking up so much time or I don't think my writing is good enough. I mean I legitimately hate this story. I've been trying to like it, I really have. But the truth is, _Swan Song_ is one of those stories that seems cool in theory but is impossibly difficult to execute properly. And the lack of action and a concrete story arc just make this really boring to write. I told you in Ch1 that I was probably going to run this fanfic into the ground. And that's precisely what has happened. If my only regular reader (you rock, Xylia!) was not so supportive and excited when I posted chapters, I would have abandoned this fic a while ago. I have no will to write _Swan Song_ anymore. This chapter is the climax chapter, the most important chapter in a story. I tend to spend a long time obsessing over the climax chapter — revising, editing, revising again, at least three betas — but for this chapter, I am past the point of caring. It's far from my best work, and I'm not willing to invest the time to _make_ it my best work. Just try to understand, and imagine it as you will.

This doesn't mean I'm stopping the story. I only have two chapters left plus an epilogue I've already written. I have a killer ending planned out that I really, really, _really_ want to share with you. I'm just letting you know that if I only update once or twice a month, it's not because I'm lazy. It's not even because I don't have the time (because I do). It's because I do not want to write this story anymore. You, Xylia, and my ending that I want to show you, are literally the only things keeping me going. And I'm okay with that. Because I _will_ finish _Swan Song_. I will not abandon you. I will not abandon this story. And most importantly, I will not abandon Tam and Linh.

If nothing else, I 100% assure you that those last two chapters (and the epilogue) will be up before _Lodestar_ comes out, even if I have to stay up all night writing and post it at 11:59pm on October 31.

Now that I've said that, I have one warning about this chapter which is that I use my one T-rating F-bomb allotment in this chapter. ('Cause you know, it's the climax, and characters tend to get very emotional at the climax of a story.) I know that Shannon never swears in her writing, but I do feel like this is a more mature fanfic of KOTLC and one little swear word will not, to my knowledge, screw up the balance of the universe and send us all spiraling into endless space. I am not on the path of becoming the vulgar-tongued, plagiarizing asshole known as TMBCTC (now under the pen name "Blowjob Babe" — ugh I feel blasphemous just typing that) — I am using profanity once, quickly, because I believe it is necessary. If you're uncomfortable with this, get over it.

(I probably didn't need to write that whole spiel about using the F-word, it's just that I've seen some fanfics for children's/middle grade books where the book never swore but the fic did, and the reviews BLEW UP about it.)

* * *

 **CHAPTER 14**

 **POISONED PRONOUN**

"I know," said Tam, and his sister gave him a look that was two parts confusion and one part alarm.

"I —" Tam began, but he couldn't bring himself to say the words. "I —" he tried again.

 _I killed Tristan._

 _I killed him._

His lips were made of stone. _I can't, I can't, I can't._

Linh dipped a finger into a puddle at her feet, left over by the rain. Ripples spread out from the middle in perfect circles. When they cleared, Tam could see a blurry image in the puddle, but it was dark and grainy.

"Tam," said Linh, staring into the water, "What happened this morning?"

"I've been trying to tell you," Tam said, "but I'm — I'm too afraid. I don't know how you'll react."

Linh looked up from the puddle, her face now one part confusion and two parts alarm. "I promise I won't tell anyone," she said.

 _Well, that's a start._ "First," Tam said slowly, "tell me the truth. Tell me how you know Tristan."

"No." She turned her face away.

"Why won't you tell me? We're twins. We shouldn't have to keep —"

"I have reasons to keep my secrets!" Linh interrupted, the silver in her eyes flashing like lightning. "And now . . ." She gestured to his face, and Tam put his hand to his cheek, unsure of what she saw there.

"I'm sure," finished Linh, "you have your reasons too." She prodded the puddle with her finger again. "We're both cracked mirrors now. You might as well tell me who you killed. It might fix you." As Linh choked out that last sentence, she began crying. But it wasn't the kind of crying that spilled out of her on a regular basis, Tam could see that. It was a scared angry crying, a confused crying, a helpless crying, a crying borne from seeing her brother hurt and not knowing how to fix him.

Watching her sob, tears falling into the dirt below, Tam wanted to cry too. He wanted to cry for himself and his selfish mistakes. He wanted to cry for Linh, who had grown so hopeless from years of exile. He wanted to help her, even though he knew it was impossible — she was damaged far beyond repair.

But he didn't. Tam couldn't comfort his sister, or sit by her side, or tell her stories like he used to. Exile had changed him, too. All he could feel was an space inside of him that had once held something important, then had been emptied and refilled with cold, hard concrete. He could not comfort her. He needed answers from her.

"I won't tell you until you tell me how you met Tristan, and what he had to do with that patch with the eye on it I'm seeing everywhere."

"No!" Linh wiped away her tears and stood up, destroying the doll's eye in the puddle with a motion of her foot. "I left that all behind three years ago, and now it's too dangerous to tell anyone, even you. The girl who knew Tristan and wore that patch, she is gone. She was washed away along with Atlantis when she was eleven."

"This concerns me, too!" They were both shouting now. "Whatever you used to be involved in, it's ruined my life, too!"

"I've kept you out of this! They would have used you too, you know."

Tam through his hands up in the air and started walking in no particular direction, just focused on getting away from Linh's piercing glare. She was a mystery; the things she said, Tam never understood. And he hated what he couldn't understand.

"You never say anything clearly! If you would just tell me what you did, I would know what you mean!"

"Well, you never listen to what I have to say!" Linh shouted to his retreating back. "If I say 'I can't', you'll let me have my way, but you can't be bothered to figure out for yourself what I really mean. You say I ruined your life. But I didn't make you who you are now, you're the only one who did. You fucked up your own life. You have no one to blame but yourself, and you are a coward for refusing to admit that. You'll see it soon. You are a coward just like our father, Tam Song."

"Well, you're one to talk about being an evil person. You're the spitting image of _her_!" cried Tam.

With that one poisoned pronoun, Tam felt a pain in his chest. A sharp tug on the line between him and his twin, the line he had never seen but always felt. A cry escaped his throat. The pain was worse than anything he had ever experienced.

Linh cried out as well, and Tam turned around from instinct. She was sobbing, hands flailing for something invisible in front of her. Tam began to panic. What was happening? What had happened to them? What had he done wrong?

He tried to understand.

When this story began, Tam and Linh were two puppets on one set of strings. One was always being pulled in the direction of the other. They were usually willing, even eager to follow the other toward whatever lay ahead.

But the puppetmaster was tiring of his dolls. Their strings were fraying; the wood holding them up was warped and bowed. Through no fault of their own, the line drawn between them was beginning to shiver and shake from the tension of holding them together.

There was a line. Tam had felt it forever. He had felt it when he had chased Linh's shadow to Exillium, when he had taken her hand and stepped into a beam of yellow light without question, when he was lost in the driving rain and his first thought had been of Linh.

She felt it too. She could _see_ it. And she was pulling on it.

Tam closed his eyes. His head was reeling.

 _We're connected . . . yin and yang, black and white, predator and prey . . ._

Maybe elvin twins _were_ different, after all. It's just that those who said they were didn't have the eyes to see why. Only the twins themselves did.

Tam blindly reached his hands in front of his abdomen and — caught a slippery rope. He opened his eyes and there it was, a thin shimmering line that glimmered, half-transparent, as if it was made of a magic not from this world.

It had to be broken. It was the only way they wouldn't see themselves in the other, and make terrible mistakes because of the reflection they saw in their twin.

 _Worthless_ was the word pounding at Linh's head. He could feel the thought in his own mind, growing more intense the more Tam and Linh pulled at their puppet string.

From his own mind: _She's alone all alone why did you leave her alone in the rain . . ._

With one final impossible tug, Tam wrenched the glimmering string from his body. The worst pain he had ever felt made him finally look at his stomach, and what he saw made him nearly faint.

A chunk of his abdomen had been torn out, and there was a gaping hole in him. And inside . . . he was hollow.

On the other side of the fire, the rope slid from Linh's hands like the water had from his own, that day in the garden so many years ago. She was free of their bond — they both were — but Linh remained unbroken.

But Tam began to notice little cracks in his sister's skin. Tiny fissures all over her. On the hands that had commanded waves. On the eyes that had seen humans die. On the heart that was burdened near to breaking.

She met his eyes with the question _Do you see it now?_

And Tam's shadow reached over her.

"Yes."

* * *

An hour later, Linh dipped her hand in the basket of water and traced over a section of her brother's face. When Tam had killed Tristan, part of his cheek had broken away. He just hadn't been able to see it back then.

She traced the jagged edges over and over, re-dipping her hand into the water, until the hole began to shrink. It shrank until it finally disappeared altogether.

"I thought I was broken," said Tam, "when I saw it. I thought I'd have to go to Exile, like those madmen who've had their minds broken."

Linh shook her head calmly. "You weren't broken," she said. "The broken ones don't even have bodies anymore. They kind of explode bit by bit until they're completely in pieces. Do you want me to do your other one?"

Tam nodded. Even though Linh had assured him that no one else could see their cracks and rifts, he still felt supremely uncomfortable looking at the gaping hole in his stomach. It made him feel like he was actually broken.

"If you've known about them for so long, why didn't you fix all your cracks?" he asked his twin. "It looks like you're one fall away from breaking."

"I like myself better with my scars," Linh responded. Carefully, she pulled a piece of herself from her face, inspected it, then pushed it back in. "They remind me that I can keep it together through anything."

"Even through what you didn't want to tell me?"

Another small crack formed between her eyebrows, and a piece of her shook and seemed about to come out for a moment. But it stayed steady in her forehead.

"Even through that." She dipped her hand in the water again.

They saw the world as the sea; pushing and pulling with a lull in the tide once every so often. Action and reaction, deeds done and returned . . . and broken and healed.

* * *

A/N: Did you know that's the first time I've used a legit curse word in my writing? I can feel Dumbledore smiling down on me as I type this, so . . . (I can also feel you cringing as you read the next sentence) . . . I hope I've _used it well_.

Also if you're really confused about this chapter (which you probably are, I won't judge), I hope that things will be explained better and in more detail in the next chapter. But if you really want to know what the whole I-can-see-you-breaking thing is all about, PM me and I'll try to explain it to you.


	15. The Name Linh

A/N: Ugh, sorry for such a long wait (again!). Since we're nearing the end of _Swan Song_ , I'd like to share some story stats that are giving me an *eeeee* moment: With this chapter, _Swan Song_ is officially my longest fanfic ever, word count-wise, at 35,192 words! It's also my most viewed story at 2,939 views! (I know, I'm a small-town fanfic writer. But squeeeee!) Everybody who's reading and reviewing this, thank you SO MUCH ! ! ! You're the best!

* * *

 **CHAPTER 15**

 **THE NAME LINH**

"What's your name, child?"

A concerned-looking nurse pushed a steaming mug into Linh's trembling hands.

"L-Linh Song," said Linh. She took a tentative sip of the broth, and her fingers and toes tingled with warmth.

"Do you live here in Atlantis, Linh?"

She shook her head. "I live at Thorndale. Near Opularia." She raised her head from her cup. "Where is my mother?"

The nurse looked confused. "Your mother?"

"Yes. She came here with me." Linh tried to stand up, but her legs would not hold her. They gave out from underneath her, and she collapsed back onto the hospital bed.

The nurse placed a steadying hand on Linh's arm. "I can't let you leave, Linh."

"But my mother — I have to see if she's alright!"

"I assure you she is fine. No one died today because of your doing. Our Necroseur would have felt it."

Linh's mind still felt fuzzy from the water, and it took a moment for the meaning of the words to sink in. "How do you know . . . ?"

"It's not your fault, of course," said the nurse in what she probably thought was a comforting way. "You're young, barely coming into your powers. Of course you would make mistakes. We don't blame you; it was all a terrible accident." She said all this very quickly, and never looked Linh in the eye.

"All a terrible accident," Linh repeated, mostly to herself. _Yes, that's right,_ she thought. _That is what everyone will be told._ She was still trembling all over. "What happened to me?" she asked, for the third time since the accident.

"Our best divers swam into the wreckage," the nurse obliged. "They found you floating near the breach in the force field, unconscious. You were about to drift out to sea. They brought you to the hospital, where we pumped the water out of your lungs and waited for you to wake up."

"Was anyone hurt?" She wouldn't be able to bear it if she had hurt any more innocent people, and wondered how she had been willing to do it in the first place. Anger can make people do peculiar and terrible things.

"There was no lasting damage," said the nurse. "The Si — the flood was stopped before it could spread to the streets. The people are only a bit shaken, as you could imagine. They've called the Council."

" _The Council?!_ " Linh yelped. The warmth in her from the broth abruptly died away. "Why would you do that?"

"It wasn't my decision, Linh. I'm only a nurse."

Linh wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly feeling the needle-sharp prick of cold. "Do you think . . ." She was afraid to say it. "Do you think — they'll put me in Exile?"

"Of course not. You're just a child."

On an ordinary day, Linh would have believed her. But with the warmth had faded her sense of safety, and Linh's ears, alert from the cold, had picked up the nurse's slight hesitation.

"Tell me the truth. They're going to lock me up." The thought brought tears to her eyes.

Their eyes met, and for a moment Linh thought she saw a movement near the nurse's right temple. Like a minute shifting of the earth's tectonic plates. But she blinked, and the tiny fissure was gone.

"Drink," said the nurse, gently but firmly. Linh picked up the mug again and drank until it was empty.

"Can you walk now?" asked the nurse. "Here, I'll help you up." She took Linh's hand and eased her out of bed. Linh tested out her legs, taking a tentative step. They still felt shaky, but could at least hold her up.

The nurse held her hand as Linh stumbled through the double doors of the hospital in Atlantis. There, she bid her goodbye.

"The Council will be here any minute now," she said, "and they'll be much less understanding than any of your teachers. Find your mother quickly, Linh, then go to Foxfire straight away, if you don't want to end up in Exile."

Linh needed no urging. On shaking legs, she ran.

* * *

"What were you thinking, taking her to Atlantis?" her brother was shouting. Linh felt a pang of guilt. It hadn't been Thanh Song's idea. Her mother was blameless — but of course Linh couldn't say that without having to explain much more than the truth was worth.

Councillor Bronte was speaking now. "It showed she was unstable and unfit for society. I am not sure the likes of her is fit for even Exillium."

 _He's right. I'm not. I have killed and betrayed and kept secrets, all for what? For people who never even cared. I've made more mistakes than the average elf will in their lifetime._

 _But isn't that what Exillium is about? Giving second chances?_ The thought strengthened her somehow.

"I'm not afraid," she said with as much strength as she could muster.

"Neither am I," said Tam."

"Tam, you don't have to —" Her interjection was cut short as Tam's shadow stretched over hers.

"This isn't just for you," he whispered. "It's for me, too. You know what I mean.

"We're going to Exillium," Tam said aloud. "Together."

Linh nearly cried with relief. She wouldn't be alone in exile. She would have Tam, her brother, with her. And as stubborn, as stupidly verminion-headed as he was, Linh loved him. She wanted him with her.

But she hid her feelings under a mask, and glared sideways at her twin. There are two ways to keep your emotions in check: to fight them or to hide them. And Linh was done with fighting. Her fighting had destroyed a city.

She stole a glance at her mother, who had barely moved since walking into Dame Alina's office. Her face looked like it had been drawn on paper.

And, Linh realized, so did her own.

* * *

When they got home, the first thing Thanh Song did was grab her daughter's arm and pull her into the downstairs bathroom. She pulled the door shut and locked it. She exhaled deeply, and a semi-transparent mist streamed from her mouth and coated the doorknob. So no one could hear them.

Linh watched her passively, her face unchanged. Inside, Thanh grieved. Linh had her father's eyes and her mother's face; she was cursed with the kind of talent that came only from the meeting of wind and stone.

Thanh had met Quyen Song not at Foxfire, as everyone thought, but in the garden of Thorndale. The estate had been his father's before he bequeathed it to Quyen, as his ancestors had done for thousands of years.

She had felt a new pull and had followed it to the front gate of Thorndale. Knowing what she sought was inside, Thanh had snuck in through a side entrance and had made her way to the garden.

She had never been in a place so pure, so _peaceful_. But she had felt a strange _disconnection_ from the garden that she hadn't expected. She saw the wind blowing through the willows and the fish making tiny waves with their tails, but she felt nothing. No more pull.

Then she had lifted her eyes and seen Quyen Song, and everything came into focus. She suddenly felt the silence of the garden pulling her in a million different directions. An invisible wind swirled the fallen jasmine petals around Thanh's feet.

You could say it was love at first sight, but Thanh knew it was much more than that. They were only seventeen when they met; much too young to understand love. But the following year, they begun the elite levels. And under the Towers' vow of silence, they started to culture an understanding, through years of secret notes and shared looks.

When she had gotten pregnant, what had her father said? Her mother? Thanh had blocked them from her memory. But that day was when she knew she had found her true love.

In front of her, her daughter finally spoke. "What is the meaning of this, Mother?" She said it not as an accusation, but merely a curious question.

It was difficult for Thanh to express what she wanted to say, even though she had rehearsed in her head dozens of times during the meeting at Foxfire. "I — saw —" She breathed in deeply, and tried again. "I — I saw what you did in Atlantis. With the force field."

Linh blanched. "You — you did?"

"Yes," said Thanh, trying to sound more confident than she felt. "And I really must ask: Why did you do it?"

"I . . . don't know," said Linh, and it was true; she didn't know why she had brought down Atlantis, not anymore. "I had a reason, but it was . . . stupid."

Thanh was quiet for a while, mulling those words over in her head. And she remembered what her mother had told her, the woman who had always been far lovelier than Thanh herself, as they stood shoulder to shoulder over the twins' bassinet.

"Your boy will grow up strong," she had said. "He has the kind of fire in his soul that burns brightly even in darkness.

"But your daughter will be different. She is like a blank page; who she will become depends entirely on those she has to look up to. And she will look to you, Thanh. You must give her a name that carries her through storms. You must teach her to stand on her own feet. You must love her, for no one else will."

And Thanh Song had said to her mother, "I will try."

"Do you know why I named you Linh, child?" she asked, finally finding the right words, and Linh shook her head.

"Your name," said her mother, "has three meanings. 'Spring' in the Enlightened Language. And 'lily', from Liên in the human language. Part of the reason I chose this name was because it shares a meaning with Nari's, who was my dear friend for many years."

Linh frowned. She was a killer named after a killer. She supposed it was only fair.

"But your name," her mother continued, "has a third meaning. A secret meaning." She fogged up the mirror glass with her quiet breath and drew a succession of curlicued letters on it. Linh recognized it as her own name, but the strokes were archaic and slightly different.

"Linh has an entirely different meaning in the old language," said Thanh. "In ancient times, it was a sacred word. None of this flimsy spring-and-lily nonsense. No, the name Linh was considered so powerful that the first Councillors, who were very superstitious at the time, forbade it to be translated when they standardised the Enlightened Language. It means the deepest part of your soul. The ancients believed that a person's _linh_ was where their elfhood came from. They believed it is what allows elves to fly, and bottle starlight, and live forever, and do everything that humans cannot.

"I named you in the hope that your name would give your _linh_ strength. I knew that in your life, you would face trouble after trouble. You, between your father's talent and my own, would have many of the same difficulties that I face."

"What in the Lost Cities do you mean?" Linh interjected. "You've never . . ." And she trailed off, and looked away.

"I mean," said Thanh, "that I know what it's like to have an ability that no one understands."

And Linh remembered how the nurse in Atlantis had stopped herself from saying _the Silencer_ , like the word was cursed.

Her mother continued. "I've tried to love you —"

"Good job with _that_ ," Linh muttered under her breath.

"— but all you ever do is push me away." And there was the old Thanh again, her sharp tongue blaming others for her own mistakes.

"And if you just trusted me, if you only _tried_ , I would be able to help you. I'm not fighting you, Linh. I'm on your side. So do you," she finished, "have anything you want to tell me now?"

After a moment of indecision, Linh stood on her tiptoes and whispered her story into her mother's ear.

It took quite a long time to tell, and when Linh finished, both she and her mother were crying bitter tears. _This is my fault,_ thought Thanh. _I turned her into this._

She couldn't handle the truth. She buried her face in her hands.

"How could you — why _would_ you —"

She was not taking it as well as Linh had hoped. She edged toward the door and unlocked it. Her fingers were around the handle when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

Her face was riddled with cracks, from hairline cracks around her swollen eyes to a huge one that crossed the bridge of her nose and cut her face in half, like a broken doll. Her right ear looked like it could barely stay together, and she was afraid to touch it for fear that it might crumble away.

She wiped her eyes and the cracks were gone. So they weren't real, then — or at least couldn't be seen by the naked eye. She pulled Nari's little vase out of her purse and held it up to her eye. The cracks came back.

Linh swiveled her head to look at her mother, and what she saw nearly made her drop the glass.

Cracks were racing up Thanh Song's arms at an astounding speed, and didn't stop at her shoulders; they continued into her back and her stomach and her throat. Linh was seized by tremendous guilt. She hadn't thought the truth would break her mother.

But as abruptly as it had started, the rupturing of Thanh's skin ground to a halt. Although she couldn't see what was happening to herself, she shook with the effort of holding it all together, and Linh finally realized what she was seeing.

Breaking doesn't happen all at once. It happens painfully slowly, over decades of failures and losses, trials and tribulations. Each moment weighing down on you until the pressure makes a crack in your skin. Then another, and another after that, until your mind can't hold itself together anymore and you shatter.

And watching her mother through crystal, fractured in two ways that only Linh could see, Linh silently forgave her.

She thought, _I won't let myself hurt you anymore._

She would carry herself through storms. She would stand on her own feet.

She turned the doorknob and left without another word.

* * *

Thanh heard the whine of the door opening, and raised her drooping head ever so slightly. She caught one quick glimpse of Linh in the mirror, backing out of the room. She cursed herself for breaking down in front of her.

That was the last Thanh Song would see of her daughter for a long time.

* * *

A/N: And . . . done! That's the end of Linh's story, at least in _Swan Song_. It's not a perfect ending, doesn't solve anything, but secrets and relationships and just plain life are messy, and almost never have "perfect" endings. It's the end of Thanh's story as well, and although we haven't gotten to explore as much of her character as I would have wanted, I hope you all feel a sort of closure to her story also. She _is_ my favorite OC, after all — and I was trying to show you as much characterization as possible before she left the story.

Tam's last chapter will hopefully be up soon (although I've said that more times than I could count and ended up updating like three months later). I've got an interesting ending planned out for you, and I've already written the epilogue, so that'll probably be posted no more than a day or two after Ch16. And I might finish with a short story from Tristan's POV. I haven't decided yet.

I'd also like to add that the real meanings of _linh_ are, as far as I know, only 'spring' and 'spirit'. I made up the whole elvin history/etymology of the name.


	16. Now or Never

A/N: Aaaaaah it's Tam's last chapter ! ! ! AaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAA （╯°□°）╯

* * *

 **CHAPTER 16**

 **NOW OR NEVER**

The story ended as it began, in the shadow of the same three Exillium tents. They stood in the buffeting wind of a misty mountain, looking a bit worse for wear but nonetheless the same patched tents. The Waywards' faces were different — most had been replaced by younger students lost in their own Cities. Those who remained had three more years' worth of beads around their necks and, like the tents, were more weathered than when we saw them last. But despite the years of use and the mist around them, their buckles and pins were polished to a perfect shine.

They gathered around the Arch of Dividing, laughing and jeering as a teenage boy fell from the rope suspending him in the air, leaving his pants behind. Tam was laughing out loud; even Linh was snickering behind her hand. The boy was a stranger to him, but there was something about the way he carried himself that Tam didn't trust. He'd have to find a way to get a reading on him.

The boy pulled himself quickly back onto his feet, hunching his shoulders like he was sullen and angry rather than embarrassed. A silver heart glittered on his ability pin. And Tam realized why he didn't like him.

He reminded Tam of Tristan.

A shout from another of the new Waywards pulled Tam's attention away from the first boy. The next kid had sliced his rope using one of the buckles on his vest.

Smart.

The other two Waywards got down the usual way, and their teal eyes were revealed for a moment as they flipped through the air. A ripple of whispering spread through the crowd.

 _It's Fitz and his sister._

 _The Vacker kids?_

 _What'd they do to get_ here _?_

Tam didn't know them, but he remembered their brother Alvar, whose blue crystal he still kept in his pocket. Just in case.

He wondered what Alvar was doing.

And just like that, the Arch of Dividing burst into flames.

"WHOA!" he shouted in surprise, and reflexively grabbed Linh's arm. She wrenched her arm out of his grip and he caught a single glimpse of her cracked face. After that day when he had burned the Wildwood Colony, Tam had been able to see his twin's thoughts in her face as easily as if he was a Telepath. And Linh could do the same.

Linh's face was saying: _I can make up for it. I_ have _to make up for it._

And with one sweep of his sister's arm, a colossal wave reared up from the sea and crashed down onto the ruined stone arch.

* * *

In an hour Tam and Linh were back in the patched tent, taking their usual seats on the mat farthest from the Coaches. Purple Cloak never did like Tam, and after the arch incident he was sure she liked him even less. A tiny bit of resentment welled up in him as he thought of how he always ended up being punished for Linh's actions.

 _Don't think I'm not aware of that, Shade boy,_ Purple Cloak transmitted. He scooted closer to the wall, hoping to edge out of her range.

 _Did you never get the freakin' morals lesson?_ Tam wanted to say to the Coach, but a drawback of being so far away was that his shadow couldn't reach her.

A newbie Empath in the front row turned his head curiously toward Tam. _Sorry not sorry,_ thought Tam, _this is what you'll have to live with._ All the other Empaths in the tent had gotten used to the intense hatred emanating between Purple Cloak and Tam.

"Our bodies need food," said Purple Cloak, "but they do not need to be hungry. Hunger is a choice — a warning system that can be switched off by those strong enough to defy it. Take control. Concentrate. And put your head between your knees if you feel faint." Her eyes shot daggers at Tam, as if daring him to do so and invite her to more telepathic taunting.

Three hours passed in total boredom. Tam and Linh, having had to live on their own for a while now, had already taught themselves how to suppress the gnawing hunger in their stomachs. So Tam was surprised when his sister bent over and put her head between her knees, while he felt nothing. But still . . . they hadn't eaten a real meal in two and a half days.

He bent over as well, ignoring Purple Cloak's snickers, and shadow-whispered to Linh, "Are you okay?"

She turned her head so her lips were in his ear. "That girl," she whispered, gesturing with her head to the other side of the room, "has four ability pins."

"You could have stayed upright to tell me that! Purple Cloak is never going to let me hear the end of it now!" It didn't matter how loud he shouted; no one could hear it save him and Linh.

"But don't you think it's odd?" Linh asked.

"Not really. She's probably just super talented."

"Then why did the Council let her go?"

Tam frowned. He hadn't thought of that.

"She's too strong for them," whispered Linh, answering her own question. "They don't want her in the Lost Cities. Tam, she's like me."

Tam stayed silent. He didn't know what to make of it.

"She has a swan song," said Linh.

"What does that mean?"

"I've seen her before," said Linh, ignoring Tam's question. "It was a long time ago, but I don't have to see her face to know it's her."

"Where did you see her?"

"In the rain," replied Linh vaguely. "Tam, you need to find a way to talk to her."

Tam raised his head slightly in the direction of the many-talented girl. She had her chin propped up on her hands and her lips were moving silently — a Telepath habit. She was too far away, however, for Tam to make out what she was transmitting.

"Why?"

"Just do it," Linh said, and right then the dismissal gong rang, and fifty pairs of boots thundered out the tent flap.

Tam and Linh left and lined up outside with the rest of the Waywards, but his eyes were focused on the many-talented girl. She flinched in surprise as she plucked her second-day bead from the air, but didn't drop it. Tam still didn't see why Linh wanted him to talk to her.

She fastened the bead onto her cord, inspecting it with thoughtfulness and perhaps a little melancholy. Her quiet lips had finally stopped moving. Tam stretched his shadow over hers. It was now or never. And yet he hesitated.

He wondered what to say.

* * *

A/N: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAepiloguewillbeupinaminuteandilldoallthesentimentalendofstorystuffinthatanAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA


	17. Swan Song (Epilogue)

A/N: *endless screaming into the void*

* * *

 **CHAPTER 17 (EPILOGUE)**

 **SWAN SONG**

Green all around. Ranging from a spring day in sunlight to the shallow sea at night. Some was as natural as the foliage, and others lurid like a jeweled flood. There were tears glowing silver and teeth glinting white, hair the color of crows and emerald capes like an opaque wind.

The woman is guilty herself; she wears a dark green dress dappled with shadows, her shoulders bare of any noble cape. The tips of her hair match her dress for the occasion — it looks, from a distance, like her hair fades into her back. She stands at the edge of the Wanderling Woods, separate from the steady stream of mourners with hands clasped and heads bowed.

At the front of the line, receiving the queue of nobles with a smile and a handshake is Thanh Song, with her heart on her sleeve and a diamond at the corner of each eye. When you mourn, you must hide your grief. You must greet guests and accept their condolences, perhaps politely shed a few tears. You are not allowed to sob, not allowed to break, not allowed to collapse onto the grass at the base of your husband's tree.

Linh watches as a new crack appears on her mother's face, beginning at her right temple and spreading downward like roots taking hold. She doesn't say anything, just waits and watches. She has forgotten how silent a place could be, and the idea of speaking feels profane.

No one has noticed her yet, the daughter of the dead. They are too busy asking with their eyes what they cannot say with their mouths, and answering with the same question.

 _How did he die?_ implore blue eyes. _How did he die?_

Thanh sees Linh before anyone else does. Her eyes widen slightly — she has seen a ghost in the mirror, or a mirror in the ghost. Diamonds twinkle at the corner of each eye. With a quiet _excuse me_ to the guest in front of her, she glides — no, _runs_ — to her daughter. She pulls Linh's hands into her own, to see if she is real. And she is.

But the moment passes, and Thanh does not know what to say. What kind of a mother is she, whose daughter only comes home to attend a funeral?

"Your hair is different," she finally manages to say.

"It's been twenty years," replies Linh after a pause.

"Right." Thanh searches for something else to say, something else to tell her daughter how much she misses her. What comes out is:

"The planting was beautiful. It's a shame you missed it." A pulse in the wind. "Is your brother coming?"

"Of course not." Linh is losing patience with the woman who calls herself her mother. "You know that."

"He would never come. I just hoped . . ."

"He's no different than when you saw him last."

She finally says it, the question that everyone has been asking with her eyes, the question she knows the answer to and yet doesn't know at all. "What happened, Linh?"

Her name, the name Linh, sparks more tears into her eyes. The name Linh coming from this elf who was her mother and her jailer and her savior and a complete mystery. But she keeps her face a mask. Mourning does not allow for grief.

"He came home as the sun rose with an empty vial in his hand and half his face crumbling to dust."

Thanh shakes her head. "His father, I can understand. But my husband? I loved him, you know. Did he not think of me?"

"I don't believe he thinks of anyone. But he needed to, though. He carries far too much bitterness in his heart. He still thinks Father was responsible for everything. He had to pay."

 _But why did_ I _have to pay?_ "Twenty years, you say it's been?"

"Yes." It's a game now, to see who can go the longest without betraying their grief.

"It's been twenty years, and I don't go a day without regretting every lost moment with you."

"Then you carry more bitterness inside you than Tam."

Thanh doesn't want to admit her daughter may be telling the truth. "I suppose we owe each other an apology."

"I owe you nothing, Mother." Linh's eyes have turned steely gray.

"Excuse me?"

"You took my childhood from me. You took my everything. I used to hate you for it, but I don't anymore. You knew not what you did, Mother. I forgave you twenty years ago. Or else your tree would have been planted today next to Father's."

Thanh is still shaking her head, disbelieving. Linh is not different at all. She is still the girl who walked away . . . and at the same time she has changed so much she might as well be lost forever. "What are you _saying?"_

"I'm saying we owe each other nothing. I don't want your apology and I won't give you mine. I gave you a crack and you gave me one, too, but the truth is we're breaking all the time, all of us. Every day a piece of us is one day closer to burning to gold and falling away."

She has never even entered the woods. Her feet hover on the threshold between jewels and treasures, then pivot . . . and turn . . . and walk away.

Thanh is desperate. "Come back to Thorndale with me, Linh," she nearly begs. "I miss you."

Linh can hear her, but keeps walking in silence.

"Don't you want to see Nari again?" cries her mother.

"I know who Nari was," says Linh without stopping. "I know why she grows in a ring of blood. And I never want to see her, ever again."

The guests are all watching now, the widow whose diamonds have been washed away and her mirror, her ghost, her daughter walking away from her father's funeral. Never looking back.

No one sees the fissures spreading from her fingers into her spine, through the back of her skull and carving shapes into her neck. She is leaving a trail of invisible shards of herself outside the Wanderling Woods. She walks away, with the complete works of Shakespeare tucked away in her head, and a broken jeweled city dancing in her eyes, and a doll's eye burned into her heart.

* * *

It is said that a swan is mute for its whole life, and only right before its death does it sing its first and final song. But the truth isn't always quite the way they tell it. Sometimes a swan does spend its years in silence, and only finds its voice when there is no alternative. Those are the ones who live in fear, who are afraid to take the risk, who stay tethered to the ground, frightened of falling and shattering. Others truly cannot sing, and go to their grave without uttering a single note. They have a song inside of them, but are burdened with regret, and have buried their song deep within their bones. But there are a few who, through years of trials and laughter and tears, can choose when to give up their song. Their song is the story of their fears and regrets, triumphs and failures, cracks and crevices. And it must be shared. Some share it with the whole world, handing out pieces of themselves like flowers. Others are more selective — they share with only a brother, or a friend, or a mother.

Everyone who has listened to a swan song feels lucky to have heard it.

* * *

A/N: My body is numb. Voices call out to me from the void, but I can no longer hear them over the beating of my racing heart. I am stressed to the point where I feel no relief. The story is done. It's DONE. I loved it, I hated it, it was a storm of horror and pain. I can no longer see color.

*knocks back of head with my hand*

(virtual cookie if you got that Odd Squad reference)

It's done. I can't believe it's done. Holy crabdoodles. I did not actually expect to finish this trainwreck of a fic. Ohmygod my eyes are burning and I feel like my body is frozen in the Thinker sculpture position. Fudgefudgefudgefudge ok I'm gonna curl up and sleep now.

Wait one sec. I can't! Because as I spend my mandated no-homework weekend Writing 'Til I Drop™ and pretending to be peppy in this A/N when my only true emotion is that paragraph^, I have to THANK ALL OF YOU! Especially **Xylia Neo** , **strawbr'yblond periwinkle love** , **EmUnited** , and **Ivypool2005**. Y'all are awesome. As for the rest of you reading _Swan Song_ , thank you for putting up with me and my slow updates and my rants in the A/N. And know that you're always welcome to PM me, anytime.

Since this _is_ the last chapter (never thought I'd write that, heh), I would really really really really really really really really really really really really appreciate it if you reviewed, even if you're on Guest. Even more than usual. I want to know what you thought of the story, what I could improve, what I do well, anything at all. Because I might be coming back soon with another fic . . .

(No promises though. There's around a 52.5% chance that I will be too completely swamped with school and extracurriculars and other projects to write a new KOTLC fic anytime soon. But I _do_ have an idea. And an ML crossover drabble is definitely coming in the future.)

Um, what else?

Oh yeah, I was going to write that short story on Tristan. Let's just say that's not happening. Nope, never, not at all. I am done with this story. But the short story I was planning is actually kinda important, so I'll give you the SparkNotes version: Tristan was a failed first attempt at the Lodestar Initiative, meaning that the Neverseen gave him some alicorn DNA and that's why he has a brown-flecked eye and can Inflict positive emotions. So . . . yeah. That's why.

And that's just about it! Please review and THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU ! ! ! Now imma go sleep for 1568403 hours, which according to Google is a little over 179 years. So see you in the year 2195!


	18. SWAN SONG Playlist

A/N: In typical KEEPER fashion, here's a playlist of songs that I listened to while writing _Swan Song_!

* * *

 **SWAN SONG Playlist**

 **(aka: songs that inspired me as I wrote)**

Dollhouse, Melanie Martinez

Reflection, _Mulan_

Hurricane, Halsey

I Believe, Christina Perri

Ran, Allison's Invention

No One Is Alone, _Into the Woods_

Quiet Violence, Sharon Kenny

Confession, Rachael Sage

It Takes Two, _Into the Woods_

You've Got a Friend In Me, _Toy Story_

Clean, Taylor Swift

Lodestar, Sarah Harmer

Swan Song, Lana del Rey


End file.
